Research Fellow Nader is a research fellow at KAPSARC. His research interests include development economics, economic modeling, and natural resource economics. He leads… Nader is a research fellow at KAPSARC. His research interests include development economics, economic modeling, and natural resource economics. He leads a project exploring the role of sovereign wealth funds in promoting economic diversification in oil-dependent economies. Nader holds a B.Sc. in operations research, an M.Sc. in applied mathematics and computational science, and an MBA in finance.

Expertise

• Sovereign wealth funds; natural resource economics; economic modeling

Former Research Associate

Visiting Researcher Frederic is professor emeritus, Fox School of Business, Temple University, where he taught for 30 years. He was a visiting… Frederic is professor emeritus, Fox School of Business, Temple University, where he taught for 30 years. He was a visiting researcher fellow at KAPSARC where he is participating in the development of energy models and writing policy analyses in a range of areas, including domestic energy use in Saudi Arabia, market power in world oil markets, designing and managing income stabilization funds, and China's and India's energy economies. He works mainly in the area of energy-market forecasting and energy policy analysis. Prior to joining Temple, he was at the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy and its predecessor, the Federal Energy Administration, where he headed the group that did the economic impact analyses of the bills and laws passed during the Carter administration and developed and ran the forecasting models then used for policy analyses and the forecasts in the EIA Annual Report. He has authored over 100 refereed articles. In one study he was ranked in the 20 most published researchers in his field over a fifty-year span. He was the editor in chief of the journal Interfaces, an area editor for Operations Research, and the Informs Journal on computing, and the Vice President of Publications for INFORMS and its predecessor society, Operations Research Society of America. He has been involved in studying local economic policy issues, including advising the Tax Reform Commission of the City of Philadelphia, estimating the impact on jobs of building casinos in Philadelphia, and political redistricting. He also did a queueing study oil tank vessels on the Delaware River.

Acting Vice President/ Program Director Axel Pierru received his Ph.D. in economics from University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne (France). He also holds an HDR degree, which… Axel Pierru received his Ph.D. in economics from University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne (France). He also holds an HDR degree, which is a French accreditation to supervise research. In 2007, Dr. Pierru was appointed Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (knighthood award in the academic field) by the French Ministry for National Education. In 2011 Dr. Pierru joined KAPSARC in Saudi Arabia, after spending 15 years at IFP Energies Nouvelles (France) where he led research, consulting and training projects and taught energy economics and finance to postgraduate students. Dr. Pierru has served in various leadership positions at KAPSARC, including as interim Vice President for Research. Since 2014 he has been a program director, and currently he leads the Energy Macro & Micro-economics Program. He is also Acting Vice President, Knowledge & Analysis. He undertakes applied research that combines methodological innovation with practical relevance for policymaking. His expertise covers oil market and pricing, energy economics, policy, finance and modeling, and oil-exporting economies. Dr. Pierru has a proven track record of methodological innovations with 50 journal papers to his name. He has been a key contributor to the development of novel lines of research, such as the role of OPEC in stabilizing the oil market, the economic modeling of price controls, or the evaluation of investment projects by international oil companies facing various tax systems. He also coauthored with Denis Babusiaux the book Corporate Investment Decisions and Economic Analysis: Exercises and Case Studies (2005), which is the fruit of years of teaching, consulting and research, and contains numerous examples from the oil and gas sector.

Expertise

• Energy modelling
• Energy economics
• Energy policy
• Oil pricing and finance