She will tackle scenarios from around the world and highlight the internationally acclaimed success story of Peru.

Elena Panaritis, author of Prosperity Unbound: Building Property Markets with Trust (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), is an acclaimed economist and social entrepreneur. Her ideas are particularly timely, especially in the context of the current global economic crisis and the ongoing efforts to eliminate illiquid/informal property markets around the world.

“It is no accident that this crisis has originated in the United States,” Elena explains. “The property system is built on a false assumption: that the property is valued correctly. Unless that’s fixed, the risk will always be far greater than necessary.”

Panaritis is the founder of a prototype triple-bottom-line investment advisory firm, Panel Group, and is a former World Bank economist. She has played a direct, hands-on role in creating stable property markets and preventing mortgage crisis such as ours. She created a new methodology and used it to spearhead property rights reform in Peru, with enormous and internationally recognized success. Some nine million people benefited from the reforms in about three years.

Robert Litan of the Brookings Institute and The Kauffman Foundation of Entrepreneurship calls Panaritis’ work a “real contribution.”

Panaritis is an expert on property rights, illiquid real estate assets, and public sector management. In addition, she teaches economic development, housing finance and property markets reform at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; INSEAD; and the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies. In more than a decade as an economist at the World Bank, she spearheaded several institutional reforms, including the property rights reform in Peru. She currently blogs at www.prosperityunbound.com/blog.