[Biography, english version]

She is senior lecturer/associate professor in the Department of Financial and Actuarial Economics of the Universitat de València (Spain). She holds a licenciatura (former Spanish undergraduate degree) in Business Management and Administration by Universitat de València, a BA (Hons) in European Management by the University of Westminster (United Kingdom) and a PhD in Quantitative Finance by Universitat de València. Her research has been developed in the field of volatility transmission between financial markets, risk management, energy markets and financial ethics. This activity has also been developed as a visiting researcher in different centres such as the Department of Finance of Tilburg University (The Netherlands) and the Department of Economics and Business of Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain). Her experience as a researcher is supported by several publications in journals such as Financial Analysts Journal, Quantitative Finance, Review of World Economics, Environmental Economics, Revista de Economía Financiera, Journal of Business Ethics, Sustainability, Journal of Cleaner Production, Journal of Risk or Finance Research Letters. She has also research experience from her participation as a collaborating researcher in several projects from public and competitive calls (both regional and national). Finally, her participation in different governing and representative bodies of the university should be highlighted. She was, for instance, vice-dean of the Faculty of Economics of Universitat de València.

Hipolit Torro is currently professor of Financial Economics at the Universitat de València, Spain. He has a B.A. in Economics and Business Administration from the Universitat de València, a M.Sc. in Financial Mathematics from the Universities of Edingburgh and Heriot-Watt and a Ph.D. in Financial Economics from the Universitat de València. He has published a number of referred articles in finance and economics academic journals (Energy Economics, Energy Policy, The Journal of Futures Markets, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Quantitative Finance, The Journal of Risk, Journal of Banking and Finance,…) and he has contributed to several books and conference proceedings. He has participated as a lead investigating member in research projects funded by the Generalitat Valenciana, Fundación Caja de Madrid, the Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, and the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia of Spain. His current areas of interest are Energy Derivatives (electricity, oil, natural gas and renewable energy sources), Asset Pricing and Risk Portfolio Management.

Dr. Carlos Vidal-Meliá is  Professor (Full) of Social Security and Actuarial Science at Valencia University (Spain), and research affiliation with the Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico (ICAE), Complutense University of Madrid (Spain), and the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR), UNSW (Australia).   He also works as an independent consultant-actuary. He holds a PhD. in Economics from the University of Valencia, a degree in Actuarial Science from the Complutense University of Madrid and a degree in Business from the University of Valencia. He has worked as an adviser on company and personal pension schemes and as a financial economist for small firms.

He has published several papers in refereed journals such as Mathematics, Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanj, SORT (Statistics and Operations Research Transactions), Journal of Population Ageing, Sustainability, SERIEs (Journal of the Spanish Economic Association), Scandinavian Actuarial Journal, Astin Bulletin, Applied Economics , Journal of Economic Policy Reform,  Journal of Pensions Economics and Finance , International Social Security Review , Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance, Fiscal Studies, or Journal of Risk and Insurance, among others.

His research interests include public pension reforms, automatic balance mechanisms, the actuarial balance for pay-as-you-go finance, the theoretical basis for integrating retirement and permanent disability using a generic NDC framework, the assessment of the 2011-2013 reforms of the public pension system in Spain using the Swedish pension system as a benchmark, the idea of combining retirement and long-term care annuities with graded benefits, gender redistribution when using unisex conversion factors to compute the initial benefit of life care annuities embedded in a PAYG pension system, the analysis of whether the rates levied to cover the actuarial cost of pensions deriving from occupational injury and disease are the appropriate ones, and the representativeness of the Continuous Sample of Working Lives (CSWL). In November 2014 he was awarded (jointly with Manuel Ventura-Marco) the Actuarial SCOR Prize for Spain and Portugal.

In 2009, working within the framework of the Toledo pact (Pacto de Toledo), Prof. Vidal-Meliá proposed the reform of the Spanish pension system following the philosophy that inspired the reform of the public pension system in Sweden, i.e. the introduction of notional accounts, actuarial balances, automatic balance mechanisms and personalized information statements. His proposal was aimed at improving the system’s equity, transparency, solvency and communication with contributors and pensioners. Unfortunately, the results of the 2011-2013 Spanish reform deviate significantly away from his proposal:

Carlos Vidal-Meliá (2014), “An Assessment of the 2011 Spanish Pension Reform Using the Swedish System as Benchmark” Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, 13 (03), 297-333.

Carlos Vidal-Meliá (2014), “Una storia infinita (The 2011-2013 Spanish pension reform: a never-ending story)” Opificium, Revista Consiglio Nazionale Periti Industriali, 5 (4), 38-41.