Ruben Atoyan is senior economist in the IMF’s European Department and the lead desk economist for Serbia. He has an extensive track record of operational program work aimed at addressing a wide range of issues, including balance of payment pressures, fiscal adjustments, structural reforms, and banking sector pressures. He has published numerous cross-country analyses, including on such topics as lessons from the transition to market-oriented economy in Eastern Europe and Western Balkans, impact of emigration on sending countries' income convergence, crisis resolution, and managing capital flow surges. In 2012-15, he was the IMF Resident representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina. A Russian national, he joined the IMF after he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005 and since then worked on a number of emerging market and low income countries in Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus, Africa, Caribbean, and Latin America.