Elias is a Professor of Economics at the London Business School, where he co-directs the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development. Elias, a CEPR Research Fellow, is a Managing Co-Editor of the Review of Economic Studies. He holds an LL.B. from the law school of the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, a Master's in Public Administration (MPA) from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in economics from the London Business School. After completing his doctorate in 2005, he worked for two years at the Financial Research Division of the European Central Bank. From 2007 till 2012, he worked as Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College. During 2010-2012 he served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Economics Department of Harvard University, and in 2019-2020, he was the Hal Varian Visiting Professor at MIT's Department of Economics. His research covers international finance, political economy, economic history, growth, and development. He has published in leading peer-refereed journals, among others, in Econometrica, the Review of Economic Studies, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review, and the Journal of Finance. Elias was the inaugural 2013 European Investment Bank Young Economist laureate. His research has been recognized with the 2005 Young Economist Award by the European Economic Association and the 2008 Austin Robinson memorial prize by the Royal Economic Association for the best paper published in the Economic Journal. In 2018, Elias received a European Research Council (ERC) consolidator grant for research on African economic history.