Born in Madrid, Spain, in 1955, he is Professor of International Economics at the Economics and Business Administration Faculty of the Universidad Complutense of Madrid (Spain) and has also been professor of the Universities of Geneva (Switzerland) and Nebrija in Madrid. He was for 24 years development economist and UN permanent staff at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva.
Juan A. de Castro field of expertise is concentrated particularly in development economics, new forms of competitiveness for human and sustainable development and peace and economic reconstruction in war-stricken countries. He was appointed in 1994-1995, by the UN Security Council, as the Economist and specialist on economic reconstruction of the UN Special Peace Mission to Afghanistan headed by Ambassador M.Mestiri. He is today senior international advisor to various governments in Africa and Latin America, national and international institutions and international organizations on green competitiveness, “Nation-branding” and communication for development, sustainable development and the knowledge economy.
He promotes the implementation of innovative development policies based on the generation of external economies for the competitiveness of regions and nations. In this regard, he conceived, launched and managed, in the 1990’s, the UN BIOTRADE Initiative under the UN Convention on Biodiversity with the aim to transform biodiversity into a tool for sustainable development in biodiversity-rich developing countries. More recently, he also conceived and launched the “GRECO Initiative” for the promotion of green competitiveness through clean production in the Mediterranean for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Barcelona. He has also been senior advisor on energy as an engine for sustainable development to various energy-intensive Latin American countries, through the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington.
He is presently involved, as well, on the implementation of new web tools for collective intelligence for the new University 2.0/3.0, and on policies for convergence and technological development (Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno) with the Spanish government, the autonomous governments of Andalucía and La Rioja as well as with the CSIC Materials Science Institute and the Escuela de Organización Industrial (EOI) in Madrid. He is also expert on international trade projections and foresight models and has collaborated in this field, among others, with the World Bank (“UNCTAD-World Bank World Trade Projections Model”), the Madrid Autonomous Government (“Madrid 2015”) and the Moroccan Government and UNDP (“Morocco 2030”).
As high level advisor on international monetary and financial issues, he was appointed Deputy-Director of the Economic Research Department of the Banco Santander-Central Hispano in Madrid at the beginning of the 1990’s. He is Commissioner of the Commission on Globalization of the State of the World Forum and was recently appointed member of the Board of Directors of the Sanofi-Espoir Foundation in Paris, an institution actively engaged in Health and sanitary relief projects for Africa. He has lectured and published widely.

Martin Aragoneses finished his undergraduate studies in Economics at UC Berkeley (where he worked in research in Development Economics and Applied Econometrics with Professor Edward Miguel), and has an M. Sc. in Economics from Barcelona GSE, where he has specialized in PhD level Applied Econometrics. For the next two years, he is heading to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to do research in Health Economics with Professor Amy Finkelstein, from the National Bureau of Economic Research – NBER – and the Poverty Action Lab – JPAL. While at MIT, he is going to undergo the training in Engineering and Computer Science before proceeding into a PhD in Economics down the road.

He works in the intersection between Economics and Data Science, understanding the role of social and economic networks that arise though digital technologies using “Big Data», and the development of government policies based on rigorous data-driven statistical studies that take advantage of these networks. He is working in developing policies to promote youth job creation, youth entrepreneurship, youth innovation and the partnering between the youth and the state to implement community projects in developing countries using online networks. He is also working on data-driven macroeconomic models to understand the effect of commodity prices in an economy, and developing policies to insure against oil shocks.

In his future empirical research career, he has the goal to integrate into Economics techniques coming from emerging fields (such as Data Science) to understand the complex world around us, and use this knowledge to help promote social and economic development. He believes understanding the role of networks as an amplification mechanism can help us build the bridge between the behavior of individuals and economy-wide dynamics.

Laurentiu Guinea, is a professor of Macroeconomics at Complutense University Madrid, which research interests are in international macroeconometrics and in the formulation of dynamic equilibrium models, their efficient computation, and their estimation. He advises on global macro trends, with a particular focus on Asia and Africa where he monitors developments related to macro-financial stability and the sustainability of the sovereign debt across emerging markets.
He does extensive work on forecasting global macroeconomic issues and provides analysis and modeling strategies related to economic imbalances of oil-exporting nations, including the management of oil wealth and energy-sector supply risks. Actually he is a PhD candidate at Complutense University and he holds a Master´s degree in Macroeconometrics and Finance from the International University Menéndez Pelayo and a Bachelor´s degree in Economics from Complutense University.»

Jaime de Azúa is a trilingual professional with an aptitude for project management and social impact, who easily adapts to meet the challenges of an evolving global arena.

His international experience is wide ranging, having worked for
relevant governmental institutions such as the European Parliament and
the United Nations in the field of communication and policy advising.
During his time at UNRIC he was the Co-editor-in-chief of Internal
Voices, for which he led several media campaigns. He also has exposure
with international NGOs, having worked a business development consultant
for HelpUP an organization that created a social network of volunteer.
Prior to Metaeconomics, he was the country manager of a medical
consultancy focused on Latin American markets.

Jaime holds a Bachelor of Law from Universidad Complutense as well as a
Master’s in International Relations from IE Business School focused on
International Politics, Geopolitics, Diplomacy, International Political
Economy, and Conflict Resolution and Negotiation. He speaks Spanish,
English and French.