Franco Bevilacqua studied general economics at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, from 1990 to 1996. In 1997, he joined MERIT as a PhD student in the MERIT-UNU/INTECH PhD Programme. His main research interests are in the fields of non-linear time series and cointegration analysis. He wrote his first paper on non linear dynamics in seemingly unit root (random) processes using univariate time series analysis and chaos theory. Recently he has more focused on issues concerning international economics, such as the validity of parity conditions, namely the Purchasing Power and Uncovered Interest Rate Parities, under different (pegged and floating) exchange rate regimes. His promoter is Luc Soete and his supervisors are Adriaan van Zon and Jean-Pierre Urbain (Department of Quantitative Economics, Maastricht University).