Lidia Ceriani

I am an Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) in Economic Statistics at the University of Verona. My research focuses on the measurement and analysis of inequality and poverty, the role of tax–benefit systems, the notion of the middle class, and the welfare of households over time.

Alongside my position in Verona, I am a consultant with the Poverty and Equity Global Practice at the World Bank, where I work on distributional analysis, tax–benefit simulations, and the measurement of poverty and inequality in both advanced and developing economies. I also teach as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Bologna.

I received my Ph.D. in Public Finance from the University of Pavia and a degree in Economics and Social Sciences (110/110 magna cum laude) from Bocconi University in Milan. Before joining the University of Verona, I taught at SAIS Europe - Johns Hopkins, and at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC, and worked for several years as an economist and consultant at the World Bank.

My work combines distributional methods with policy-relevant questions: how we measure inequality and poverty, how tax and transfer systems redistribute resources, and how concepts such as the “middle class” should be defined and tracked across income distributions. I have published in journals such as World Development, Review of Income and Wealth, The Journal of Economic Inequality, Social Indicators Research, and the Journal of Development Studies.