Marta Reynal-Querol

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Social & Behavioural Sciences

Marta Reynal-Querol is an ICREA Research Professor at the Department of Economics and Business at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and Research Professor of the Barcelona GSE. She is also an Affiliated Professor at the BGSE, and Director of the Master in Economics at UPF. She is the Director of IPEG since December 2016. She is a Research Fellow at the CEPR, a Research Fellow at the CEsifo and a Full Member at the EUDN. She is Fellow of the EEA. She was member of the Council of the European Economic Association (EEA) between 2011 and 2015. She is member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Conflict Resolution. She won an ERC-Consolidator grant in 2014 and also an ERC-Starting grant obtained in the first call of the ERC. She won the Banco Herrero prize 2011 awarded annually to an Spanish Social Scientist under 40 years old.  She worked at the World Bank between 2001 and 2005. She holds a Ph. D. in Economics from the LSE (2001) and a Master with Honors from UPF.


Research interests

My main research interest is the study of the causes and consequences of conflict. I analyzed the relationship between religious and ethnic fractionalization, polarization, and conflict and development. I have also worked on the effectiveness of foreign aid and on the relationship between poverty and civil war and on the study of the institutional designs that may prevent or mitigate, such social conflicts. In particular I construct a database on the characteristics of leaders over the 20th century and  I investigated whether there are systematic differences in the type of leaders that can explain the economic development of countries. More recently I am using administrative data on the first colonizers of Latin America to reexamine the issue of institutions versus human capital in the explanation of economic development and conflict. Moreover I am starting a line of research on the analysis of Development and Conflict using Big Data. In particular I am working on the construction of new measures of inequality.

Selected publications

- Besley T & Reynal-Querol M 2017, 'The logic of hereditary rule: theory and evidence', Journal Of Economic Growth, 22, 2, 123 - 144.


Selected research activities

Member of the IEA Executive Committee, since June 2017

Research Professor, Barcelona GSE, since December 2016;

Fellow of the EEA since 2015.

Research Fellow CEPR since 2012; Full Member EUDN (European Development  Network) since 2012;  Research Fellow CESifo, since 2013;

Editorial Board, Journal of Conflict Resolution, March 2007-present.

ERC-Consolidator Grant (2015-2020)

PI of the Grant (Grant BFU2011-12345), Spanish Ministery of Economy and Competitiveness.

Co-organizer of the workshop “Political Economy of Development and Conflict V”

Key note speaker “SE-BSE Workshop on the Economics of Immigration and Diversity", PSE, Paris;

Invited talk:  International Economic Association, Mexico;

Seminar invitation at King’s College, UZH Zurich among others

Director of IPEG, since December 2016

Director of the Master in Economics (BarcelonaGSE-UPF), since September 2012