jean-phi

I think I began playing chess at age 10. My mother worked full-time and I stayed at school after the bell rang for most students. After I was done with my home-work my teacher would then play chess with me or challenge me to some chess puzzles. Around that time, my dad brought back to me a Chess Challenger by Fidelity Inc. A year later or so, my cousin and I joined the local chess club. It so happened that our chess club manager taught a weekly chess elective in my high school. Of course, I signed up and we basically played class size tourneys, each of us representing a Belgian soccer club. I had Malines, and did not have much more success than the real soccer team. Later during my college years, I joined the new local chess club in Liege. I irregularly showed up for the weekly tournament and one year I joined a team for the Belgian team championship. I never went far enough to even get a rating...

I am an economist, like it or not ;-) I did my joint A.B.-A.M. in Economics at the University of Liege and the University of Maastricht (where I did 2 years of Erasmus exchange.) After 2 years as a research assistant back in my home alma mater, I went to do my PhD in Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. I filed my dissertation during summer 2003. I now teach International Finance (Graduate), Macroeconomics (Graduate) and International Economics at Northeastern University. I live with my wife and daughter in Sumnerhill, a neighborhood in Jamaica Plain, Boston, MA.