Burak Uras is an Assistant Professor at Tilburg University specializing in Financial Economics and Macroeconomics. One strand of his work investigates the impact of finance on macroeconomic development in dynamic general equilibrium models. In this area of research he is particularly interested in questioning whether there is an appropriate set-up of financial institutions to induce aggregate growth and what drives the non-monotonicities in the finance & development relationship. Another strand of the research concentrates on the interactions between finance and firm behavior with a focus to understand the empirical implications of financial constraints on firms’ investment, productivity growth and labor market behavior. He was awarded a Marie-Curie research grant for his work on measuring the effects of financial development on capital misallocation. He is currently involved at a grant project financed by DFID on “barriers to finance and SME growth in 10 developing countries”. Dr. Uras received his PhD in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis and his BA from Bogazici University.