Alex Pienkowski is an economist in the European department of the International Monetary Fund with a focus on sovereign debt, in particular the resolution architecture for debt crises, the costs and benefits of state-contingent debt and the propagation of shocks during crises. He has worked on a range of countries including Portugal, Argentina, Ukraine and Mongolia. Prior to the IMF, Alex worked for the Bank of England for five years. He specialized in international issues in both the financial stability and monetary analysis departments of the Bank. Much of his time involved working on the euro area sovereign debt crisis. Alex was also an Overseas Development Institute fellow in Malawi between 2007-09.