Olga Popova is a Senior Researcher (with tenure) in the Department of Economics at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS, Regensburg). She is also a Research Fellow and the Thematic Cluster Lead on "Religion, Culture, and Development" at the Global Labor Organization (GLO) and a co-coordinator of the research trajectory "Uneven Economic Flows" within the Leibniz ScienceCampus "Europe and America in the Modern World."

RePEc ranks Olga Popova in the top 5% of female economists and in the top 6% of all economists globally (based on publications in the last 10 years).

Dr. Popova is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Population Economics, Comparative Southeast European Studies, and the Journal of Happiness Studies. She has also served as a consultant for the World Bank. Olga Popova holds a Ph.D. in Economics from CERGE-EI and Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic (2012).

Dr. Popova’s research focuses on the role of the environment and institutional legacies in economic development and individual behavior. Her research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Population Economics, Economic Inquiry, Small Business Economics, Journal of Comparative Economics, and Ecological Economics, among others.

Olga Popova joined IZA as a Research Fellow in October 2021.