Welcome

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Economics and the Institute for Sustainable Development at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. My research focuses on the political economy of sustainable development. I leverage machine learning methods to construct novel data from historical records and satellite imagery. I use these data to study the impact of policies and institutions on economic prosperity and environmental sustainability at the local and national levels, as well as the impact of environmental conditions on human populations. I am particularly interested in how indigenous cultural and institutional backgrounds interact with Western institutions to shape the economy, natural environment, and culture of rural communities in Latin America. Visit my research page to read about the projects I am currently working on.

Before joining Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, I was a postdoctoral scholar in the Environmental Markets Lab at the University of California Santa Barbara. I obtained a Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University. Before my doctoral studies, I completed my B.S and M.S in Economics at Universidad de Chile and worked for a year as a lecturer at the Department of Economics of Universidad de Chile.