Dr. Ioana Petrescu runs the Center for Leadership and Innovation at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA) in Bucharest, where she writes about fiscal policy, space economics, and AI regulation. She is also the President of Pur și Simplu Verde, an environmental NGO, and serves as a European Climate Pact Ambassador in Romania. Ioana is also a World Bank consultant focusing on issues related to center of government efficiency.
Ioana broke new ground as Romania’s first female Minister of Finance. During her nine month tenure, she implemented significant reforms including reducing social security contributions by five percentage points for employers, rewriting the Tax Code and the Code of Fiscal Procedure, introducing tax exemptions for reinvested profits, reducing the special constructions tax from 1.5% to 1%, and launching the „Virtual Private Space,” an online communication platform between the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF) and taxpayers. She also modernized the Treasury to accept card payments, eliminated 92 taxes to cut bureaucracy, laid the foundation for the Fiscal Lottery, imposed limits on cash transactions to curb tax evasion, strengthened the transfer pricing department, and promoted international treaties to reduce base erosion and profit shifting by multinationals.
After stepping down, joined Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she held research appointments at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government. In the past, she has also served as an expert for the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels. Ioana was an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland and holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.
She writes and presents extensively on space, particularly the role of government in the space industry. Some of her papers include “Balancing Regulation, Sustainability, and Growth in the Space Industry: Insights from Industry Interviews” and “Government Support and Policy Frameworks: Fostering Sustainable Growth in the Space Economy”. She also writes op-eds in “The Hill” as an opinion contributor, covering a wide range of topics from AI regulation to taxation.
Her 2017 book, “Essays in Taxation and International Relations”, analyzes issues such as flat taxation and government revenues. Her second book, “Adolescent Democracies: A Former Finance Minister’s Guide to Policymaking”, explores best practices in the delivery of public goods and services in democracies characterized by corruption, clientelism, low-paid bureaucrats, weak institutions, frequent political turnover, unclear legislation, and lack of transparency. She is now working on a third book, which combines her three greatest passions: government, economics, and space.