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Ružica Šimić Banović — A Bridge Between Academia and Policy

16 September, 2025

In an interview for the CERGE-EI blog titled “Bridging Academia and Policy”, Professor Ružica Šimić Banovićshares how her research intersects with policy work and what it takes to influence real change in gender equality, migration, and informal institutions.

As a visiting fellow at CERGE-EI Foundation and a professor at the University of Zagreb, where she serves as a Head of the Department of Economics at the Faculty of Law, Banović reflects on the challenges and possibilities in turning scholarly insights into social impact.

Ružica Šimić Banović’s interview underscores that bridging academia and policy requires more than high-quality research: it requires listening to local contexts, recognizing informal systems, committing to long-term implementation, and communicating change in a way that mobilizes both institutions and public sentiment. Her work offers valuable lessons—not only for Croatia, but for many societies navigating the intersection of law, economics, and social change.

Among other issues she studied the emigration of highly qualified populations. “Our research, as well as that of others, has shown that ‘pull’ factors related to the overall social climate and the quality of key social pillars—such as education, healthcare, and the judiciary—play an increasingly important role in the emigration decisions of highly skilled individuals.”

She explains in the interview that when it comes to young professionals, they often come from mobile professions (such as IT) and professions (such as medicine) that are already in shortage in their home countries, and whole young families tend to emigrate together, which further alters the demographic structure of their origin country.

Reflecting on earlier work like Cutting the red ribbon but not the red tape, she argues that reforms often fail not due to lack of good laws but because implementation ignores context, power dynamics, informal constraints, and human behavior. She emphasizes the need for transparency, bottom-up engagement, aligning incentives, and long-term commitment.

Her main research interests include gender equality, post-socialist economies, migration and migrant entrepreneurship, as well as informality in institutions. Her current projects are funded by diverse bodies including the U.S. Embassy, the EU, EBRD, World Bank, and University of Zagreb.

Read the full interview here.