Igor Makarov holds a PhD in Economics and is Head of the School of World Economy at the HSE University. He also leads the HSE Laboratory for Climate Change Economics and works as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Contemporary World Economy. He has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University (2011) and Harvard University (2016 and 2019), and has taught at the University of Tehran (2016) and the Autonomous University of Madrid (2017).

His academic interests cover climate change and environmental economics as well as international political economy. He is the author of more than 70 academic publications and numerous media articles. His research papers, reports, opinion columns, and interviews have been published in Russia, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Austria, Italy, France, Netherlands, Singapore, China, South Korea, Brazil, India, Iran, and South Africa.