The Mattersdorff-Steinhardt lecture is given every year by a distinguished scholar chosen by the economics department faculty.
Guest Lecturer for 2025: Yoto V. Yotov
Yoto V. Yotov is a Professor at Drexel University (Philadelphia), a Research Professor at the ifo Institute (Munich), and a member of the Council for Economic Analyses (CEA) of Bulgaria. His main areas of expertise are trade policy and economic sanctions, and he is best known for his contributions to the theory and applications of the structural gravity model of trade, including quantifying the effects of sanctions. Dr. Yotov has a BA in International Economics from the Tsenov Academy of Economics (Bulgaria), and MA and PhD in Economics from Boston College.
In the 2025 lecture, Economic Sanctions: Evolution, Consequences, and Challenges, Dr. Yotov will discuss the evolution, consequences, and effectiveness of economic sanctions as the most popular coercive tool of foreign policy over the past quarter century. He will present evidence on the effects of sanctions on various economic outcomes with a special focus on international trade and the use of the workhorse model of trade – the gravity equation.
