Alfredo Marvao Pereira received his Bacharelato (1976) and Licenciatura (1978) from the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, and his M.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1988) from Stanford University. After teaching at the University of California at San Diego for eight years, he joined the W&M faculty in 1995. He has served as consultant/advisor for the Commission of the European Communities, the European Central Bank, the World Bank, the Bank of Portugal, and the Portuguese Ministry of Finance. Alfredo's main research interests are public finance and economic growth but he has often ventured into development economics and urban economics. His current research focuses on the effects of infrastructure development on economic performance and on social security reform, both in the U.S. and in the European Union. His teaching interests include microeconomics, public finance and mathematics for economists. He is currently working on two undergraduate textbooks for Prentice-Hall with Don Campbell.

Christoph Böhringer is research associate at ZEW. He works in close cooperation with the research unit "Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management". From 2007 onwards, he holds the　chair for economic policy at the University of Oldenburg. His research focuses on the impact analysis of environmental, energy, and trade policies. He has widely published in peer-reviewed international journals on these topics. Christoph Böhringer was head of the ZEW research department "Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management" at Mannheim between 1999-2007. He studied Economic Engineering at the University of Karlsruhe and received his PhD in economics from the University of Stuttgart in 1995. Between 1995-1998 he supervised the research group "Energy Economics" at IER (Institute of Energy Economics), University of Stuttgart. In 2002, he received his habilitation and venia legendi in economics from the University of Regensburg. In 2004, he has been appointed as a full professor at the University of Heidelberg.

Teresa Ribeiro is Head of Strategic futures at the European Environment Agency of the European Union, where has worked since 1995. She is responsible for numerous projects, including, “The European Environment - State and outlooks 2010: an assessment of global megatrends”. Her main task is to analyse strategic options for the future taking into account global trends and associated uncertainties, using scenario and other forward looking methods. An Environmental Engineer by training (New University of Lisbon), she has post-graduations International Business Strategy and Negotiations (Norwegian School of Management, Oslo) and in Energy Economics and Policy (University of Lisbon) combined with more recent advanced executive trainings in Scenario Planning at GBN  and Oxford University. Her publications cover a wide range of issues environmental policy – the recent works focusing on long term input to public policy. Teresa was a member of the Global Agenda Council on Strategic Foresight of the World Economic Forum, in 2008 and 2009.