I am Full Professor of Economic History at the University of Barcelona. I got my PhD in Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I have been invited professor at the University of the Republic (Uruguay) from 2004 to 2016, and at El Colegio de México in 2019. I am Director of the "Antoni de Capmany" Economics and Economic History Research Centre of the University of Barcelona, Editor of Economic History of Developing Regions, and coordinator of the Master in Institutions and Political Economy of the University of Barcelona. I am also trustee of the European Historical Economics Society, member of the Barcelona Economic Analysis Team (BEAT) and research fellow of the Institutions and Political Economy Research Group (IPERG) and the Laureano Figuerola Institute. I have published two books and a number of articles on different Economic History topics.

Research interests

I am interested in the study of the history of transport and market integration in the 19th and early 20th centuries. More specifically, I have analysed the growth and distributional impact of railways in peripheral countries, and the mutual interaction between transport infrastructure investment, export expansion and the evolution of state capacity. I am particularly interested in: 1) the channels through which state capacity affected infrastructure investment; 2) the effects of the transport network structures on the spatial distribution of economic activity in peripheral economies; and 3) the main political factors behind the decisions on the political support to infrastructure and on the spatial structure of infrastructure networks. My final objective is to contribute to the debate on the links between the political decision-making process and the growth and distributional effects of infrastructure in developing countries.

Keywords

Transport History, Railways, State capacity, Latin America, Economic Geography, Economic Growth