Keynote Speakers

Francesco Pastore

Francesco Pastore qualified as Full Professor of Economic Policy and as Associate Professor of Political Economy and Economic Statistics. Currently, he is Associate Professor of Economics at Seconda Università di Napoli. He is also the secretary of the Italian Association of Labour Economics (AIEL) and a member of the executive board of the Italian Association of Comparative Economic Studies (AISSEC). In 2014, he has published a SpringerBrief book on: “The Youth Experience Gap. Explaining National Differences in the School-to-Work Transition”.

Numan Özcan, Director of the ILO Office for Turkey

Numan Özcan studied Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University (Istanbul, 1998), and obtained masters degrees on International Business and Management from the University of Westminster (London, 2001), and on International Relations from Gazi University (Ankara, 2002). Between 2005 and 2015, Mr. Özcan worked as the Sector Manager for Social Policy and Employment at the EU Delegation in Turkey. He also acted as the Coordinator of the Human Resources Development Team covering the EU financial assistance on employment, education, health and social inclusion fields. Mr. Özcan is the Director of the ILO Office for Turkey since 7 January 2015.

Erinç Yeldan

Prof. Yeldan received his Ph.D. from University of Minnesota, USA, and joined the Department of Economics at Bilkent in 1988. During 1994/95 he was a visiting scholar at the University of Minnesota where he taught Applied General Equilibrium Analysis. He later visited International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, D.C. and worked as a research associate. During 2007/2008 he was a Fulbright scholar at University of Massachusetts, Amherst and at Amherst College. Dr. Yeldan’s recent work focuses on development macroeconomics and on empirical, dynamic general equilibrium models with emphasis on the Turkish economy. He is one of the executive directors of the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs), New Delhi. He was a recipient of Young Scientist Award of the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA) in 1998. His works were cited among the list of Top 500 Economists by a research conducted by the European Economic Association in 2001.