He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 “for services to financial journalism.” Mr. Wolf is an associate member of the governing body of Nuffield College, Oxford, honorary fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, an honorary fellow of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy (Oxonia) and a special professor at the University of Nottingham. He has been a forum fellow at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos since 1999 and a member of its International Media Council since 2006. He was made a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by Nottingham University in July 2006. He was made a Doctor of Science (Economics) of London University, honoris causa, by the London School of Economics in December 2006.

Mr. Wolf was joint winner of the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial journalism for 1989 and 1997. He won the RTZ David Watt memorial prize for 1994, the “Accenture Decade of Excellence” at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards of 2003 and the Newspaper Feature of the Year Award at the Workworld Media Awards 2003. On December 1 2005 he was given First Magazine’s “Special Advocacy Award” at its annual “Award for Responsible Capitalism”. In January 2008, he won the AMEC Lifetime achievement Award at the Workworld Media Awards for 2007. He came second equal in the Royal Statistical Society’s awards for statistical excellence in journalism for 2008, in the category for print and online journalism. He won the “Commentator of the Year” award at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards of 2008. He was also placed among the world’s 100 leading public policy intellectuals by the British magazine Prospect and the US magazine, Foreign Policy in May 2008. He won the Ludwig Erhard Prize in 2009. He won the “Commentariat of the Year” prize at the inaugural UK Comment Awards in October 2009 and was joint winner of the 2009 award for columns in “giant newspapers” at the 15th annual Best in Business Journalism competition of The Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

His most recent publications are Why Globalization Works (Yale University Press, 2004) and Fixing Global Finance (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008 and Yale University Press, 2009).

Zoega received the Ph.D. degree in economics from Columbia University, New York, New York, USA in 1993 and the M.Phil. in 1991. Earlier he received the M.A. degree from the same university in 1989 and a B.A. degree in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Iceland in Reykjavik in 1987. Zoega specialises in macroeconomics and labour economics and has written numerous articles on the subject, including several co-authored with Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps.

An insightful, outspoken Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times, he is a passionate and articulate speaker, with a gift for relating global economic events to his audiences, and committed to speaking the truth as he sees it in the most compelling terms. His twice-weekly Op-Ed pieces for The New York Times model the depth of insight and the unflinchingly outspoken style he brings to his speeches. He is the author of several books, including most recently, The Conscience of a Liberal, and of The Great Unraveling, a bestseller.

In response to the current financial crisis, Professor Krugman has released an updated edition of his prescient 1999 book, The Return of Depression Economics, in which he warned—almost ten years ago—of the problems we face today. The new book is titled The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Professor Krugman’s work in economics has earned him broad acclaim from the economic press and several prestigious awards, including the John Bates Clark medal from the American Economic Association for his work in international trade and finance. He is recognized worldwide as a leader in the fields of economic geography and the role of increasing returns in shaping international trade.

Paul Krugman is professor of economics at Princeton University. He was chosen as one of Bloomberg's 50 Most Influential People in Global Finance, 2011.

A national of Egypt, the U.K., and the U.S. , Ms. Shafik is a global citizen with a global reputation in fields ranging from emerging markets, international development, the Middle East and Africa, to the financial sector. She has a wealth of experience in policy-making, management, and academia.

She was the youngest-ever Vice President at the World Bank, where she was responsible for a private sector and infrastructure portfolio of investments, and was part of the senior management team of the International Finance Corporation. She was the Permanent Secretary of the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID). Prior to serving at the World Bank and DFID, she worked in Cairo as a consultant on development issues.

After graduating from high school in Alexandria, Egypt, and attending the American University in Cairo, Ms. Shafik earned degrees from the University of Massachusetts—Amherst, and the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Oxford University. She was a member of the Middle East Advisory Group to the Fund. She has published widely, especially on the Middle East and North Africa, and has taught at the Wharton School of Business and Georgetown University. She speaks Arabic, English, and French.

Már Guðmundsson received a BA in economics from the University of Essex and studied economics and mathematics at the University of Gothenburg. He has a M.Ph. degree in economics from Cambridge University, where pursued doctoral study as well. Since 2004, Már Guðmundsson has served as Deputy Head of the Monetary and Economic Department of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. Prior to that, he was employed by the Central Bank of Iceland for some two decades, including over ten years as Chief Economist. Már Guðmundsson served as economic advisor to the Minister of Finance from 1988-1991. He has written a number of papers and articles on monetary and exchange rate affairs and related topics.

He is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., a co-founder of BaselineScenario.com (a much cited website on the global economy), a member of the Congressional Budget Office's Panel of Economic Advisers, and a member of the FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee.

Prof. Johnson is a weekly contributor to NYT.com's Economix, is a regular Bloomberg columnist, has a monthly article with Project Syndicate that runs in publications around the world, and has published high impact opinion pieces recently in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Republic, BusinessWeek, and The Financial Times, among other places. In January 2010, he joined The Huffington Post as contributing business editor. Professor Johnson is the co-author, with James Kwak, of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and The Next Financial Meltdown, a bestselling assessment of the dangers now posed by the US financial sector (published by Pantheon in March 2010).

Simon Johnson was Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department at the IMF from March 2007-August 2008. Mr. Johnson was on leave from the Sloan School of Management at MIT, where he was the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship.

Mr. Johnson is an expert on the financial sector and economic crises. Over the past 20 years he has worked on crisis prevention and mitigation, as well as economic growth issues in advanced, emerging market, and developing countries. His work focuses on how policymakers can limit the impact of negative shocks and manage the risks faced by their countries. His PhD is in economics from MIT, while his MA is from the University of Manchester and his BA is from the University of Oxford.