Maja Mihelja Žaja, PhD

Maja Mihelja Žaja, PhD is an Associate Professor at the Department of Finance at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, Croatia, where she has been employed since 2006. She finished the specialist postgraduate program in Insurance and reinsurance in 2010, and in 2013, she defended her doctoral thesis at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Economics and Business. In 2013, she was promoted to senior assistant. In 2016, she was appointed to the academic rank of assistant professor, and since 2021, she has been an associate professor at the Department of Finance. At the Faculty of Economics and Business, she is a teacher in the courses "Insurance and Risks", "Public Finance", "Payment System", "Tax System of Croatia", and “Public Debt Management”. At the post-graduate specialist study "Insurance and Reinsurance", she teaches the course "Insurance and Reinsurance Market in the Republic of Croatia, the EU and the World". Besides that, she is an external associate at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb, teaching "Insurance and Reinsurance" at the postgraduate specialist program "Products, Digital Innovations and Technologies in Insurance - INSURTECH, and at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, teaching "Fiscal Policy" and "Public Debt” at the postgraduate specialist program “Fiscal System and Fiscal Policy”. She mentored many students for their final thesis, and some gained the Dean's Award and the award of the Croatian Insurance Office.  She is the co-author of a university textbook and the author or co-author of many scientific and professional articles in the field of finance. As a presenter or session leader, she has participated in domestic and international scientific conferences. In 2018, for her scientific paper entitled "Forecasting fiscal variables in selected European economies using least absolute deviation method", she received Dr. Pero Jurković Award for special contribution to the field of finance. For the scientific paper entitled "Analysis of the efficiency of the insurance industry in the European Union", she received an award of the Croatian Insurance Bureau for the best scientific paper published in the field of insurance. She is the head of the post-graduate specialist study "Insurance and Reinsurance".