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Olga Mikheeva

Dr Olga Mikheeva is a Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP).

Olga Mikheeva
Olga holds a PhD in Public Administration and Technology Governance from TalTech (Estonia) and is currently a Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the UCL IIPP. During her PhD work, which had a focus on developmental states, development banks and financial bureaucracy, she was a visiting researcher at the University of Malaya, European Center in Singapore and Centre d’Économie Paris Nord at Paris 13. Olga holds an MA in Technology Governance from TalTech and had studied in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (National University of Singapore).

Outside the IIPP, Olga is coordinating Research Area on Monetary Economics, Finance and Financial Institution atthe European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) where she also served as a member-elect of the EAEPE Council during 2017-2020. She is also a regular peer reviewer in a number of academic journals in heterodox economics, economic development and innovation, and political economy. In addition, Olga is a trustee in the Foundation for European Economic Development (FEED) and a member of the London Political Economy Network (LPEN). During 2017-2019, she acted as the coordinator of the Economics of Innovation Working Group at the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) Young Scholars Initiative (YSI). 

Prior to joining the IIPP, Olga worked in policy evaluation and advisory field as a senior expert in Technopolis Group, a consultancy firm specializing in STI policies and a former spin-off from SPRU (University of Sussex). During this time Olga contributed to theory-based evaluations of STI policies; to the spatial/regional analysis of industrial and digital transformation; to the development of a national Circular Economy methodology; and supported the development and evaluation of international STI and cross-border cooperation programs. 

Research summary

Olga’s current research project (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship – DeFInE) has a focus on state investment banks within the broader notion of financial governance of innovation and development. The main goal of this two-year project is to understand why and how some of these specialized financial institutions become strategic state-backed investors while others remain far on the edges of policy-oriented financing decisions and play very limited roles. In broader terms, this is related to the question of how national governments pursue state-led investments in innovation and development and what are the political economy (policies, institutions, coordination) and financial bureaucracy (organisations, competences) behind it. 

Another area of Olga’s research work is financial governance of the green transition and specifically policies and coordination between key governing agencies: Central Banks and Finance Ministries. The green transition – understood in terms of structural change – requires deliberately designed financing policy tools and instruments, institutions and coordination between financial (fiscal, monetary, investment) policies on one hand and industrial/innovation policies in the other hand. Besides policy alignment and coordination, there is also the need to understand how policy decisions are designed and implemented, what are policy capacities and public bureaucracies behind these decisions. In addition, what are the major contested policy spaces or potentially conflictual objectives pursued by certain types of public bureaucracies along the industrial-financial axes.


Selected publications

Articles
  • Mikheeva, O. 2022. Development banks and strategic state-led investment function. Innovation and Development, special issue ‘Financing Innovation for Development in the Global South’, forthcoming.

  • Mikheeva, O. 2019. Financing of innovation: National development banks in newly industrialised countries of East Asia. Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics, 42, pp. 590-619.

  • Juuse, E. Raudla, R., Cepilovs, A. and Mikheeva, O. 2019. The Europeanization of financial regulation and supervision on the Baltic-Nordic axis: National bureaucracies’ perspective. Journal of Baltic Studies, 50 (4), pp. 1-45.

  • Mikheeva, O. and Piret, T. 2019. Co-creation for the reduction of uncertainty in financial governance: The case of Monetary Authority of Singapore. Administrative Culture, 19 (2), 60-80.

  • Raudla, R., Mjøset, L., Kattel, R., Cepilovs, A., Mikheeva, O. and Tranøy, B. S. 2018. Different Faces of Fiscal Bureaucracy. Administrative Culture, 19 (1), pp. 5-36.

Book chapters
  • Mikheeva, O. and Juuse, E. 2021. Development Finance in the Baltic States and the Process of Europeanization. In Daniel Mertens, Matthias Thiemann and Peter Volberding (eds.) The Reinvention of Development Banking in the European Union: Industrial Policy in the Single Market and the Emergence of a Field, pp. 253-282. Oxford University Press, in press.
    Policy studies and reports
    • Mazzucato, M., Carreras, M. and O. Mikheeva. 2022. First Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) lessons for the EU economic governance framework. European Parliament study series, forthcoming. 

      Mazzucato, M., Macfarlane, L., Mikheeva, O. and R. Bellinson. 2022. Keeping Wealth Local: Camden Community Wealth Fund, Policy Report, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, forthcoming.

      Mazzucato, M., Kattel, R., Algers, J. and Mikheeva, O. 2021. The Green Giant: New Industrial Strategy for Norway. UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Policy report (PR 21/01). Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/pr21-01

      Mazzucato, M. and Mikheeva, O. 2020. The EIB and the new EU missions framework: Opportunities and lessons from the EIB’s advisory support to the circular economy. UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), Policy Report (IIPP WP 2020-17)

    Working papers
    • Mikheeva, O. and Ryan-Collins, J. 2022. Governing finance to support the net-zero transition: lessons from successful industrialisation. UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Working Paper Series (No.WP 2022/01). Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/wp2022-01

    • Mikheeva O. 2018. Institutional context and the typology of functions of national development banks. The case of Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) in Malaysia. Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics No. 82. Tallinn University of Technology and The Other Canon Foundation. Available at http://technologygovernance.eu/files/main//2018121211430101.pdf