Paula Bustos

Paula Bustos

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Social & Behavioural Sciences

Paula Bustos is an ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Affiliated Professor of the Barcelona School of Economics, a Fellow of the European Economic Association, Chair of the EEA Women in Economics Committee, CEPR Research Fellow and Co-leader of Trade and Spatial Frictions Theme of the STEG-CEPR program. She obtained her PhD in Economics at Harvard University and her BA at Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Argentina. She studies the economic effects of climate change, new agricultural technologies and international market integration. Her work has been published in leading journals such as the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Her research on agricultural productivity and structural transformation has been funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council in 2017. Her new research on adjustment to climate change in developing countries has been funded by a Consolidator Grant in 2023.

Research interests

My research can be described as empirical investigations in economic development guided by international trade theory. My first line of research studied the effects of a regional free trade agreement between Argentina and Brazil. I showed that it induced firms to export and innovate but reduced the demand for unskilled labor in the manufacturing sector. A second line of research studies the effect of the adoption of new agricultural technologies, such as GM crops, on economic development in Brazil. Unskilled workers lost their jobs in agriculture but reallocated to the local manufacturing sector. This inflow of unskilled workers reduced local innovation and growth. However, agricultural productivity growth also led to savings and capital flows towards urban regions where it financed the expansion of the manufacturing and service sectors. A recent line of research studies the effects of climate change on labor and capital allocation across sectors and regions in Brazil.
 

Selected research activities

Principal Investigator, ERC Consolidator Grant “Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries”, 2024-2029
Research team member, AEI-MICIU Grant “Inequalities”, 2021-2024
Chair of the Women in Economics Committee, European Economic Association
Co-leader, Trade and Spatial Frictions Theme, STEG-CEPR Programme
Co-organizer and Mentor, European Economic Association Women in Economics Mentoring and Networking Retreat, Rotterdam, August 2024
Co-organizer and Mentor, Barcelona School of Economics Junior-Senior Networking Session for Women in the BSE Research Community, Barcelona, October 2024
 
Co-organizer, CEPR-STEG Annual Conference & Theme Workshops: Agricultural productivity and sectoral gaps (theme 3) and Trade and spatial frictions (theme 4), Barcelona, January 2024
Co-organizer, Workshop on Advances in Micro Development Economics (BSE Summer Forum), Barcelona, June 2024
Supervisor, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow Bruno Conte (UPF)
PhD thesis Co-Advisor, Giorgio Pietrabissa (CEMFI), July 2024. Placement: London School of Economics
PhD thesis Co-Advisor, Sophie Nottmeyer (CEMFI), Franziska Schwingeler and Santiago Gamba (UPF)
Event participation
Keynote: “Firms, Labor Markets, and Development” Workshop (Siracusa)
Panelist: Universidad Torcuato Di Tella-Department of Economics 30th Anniversary Event (Buenos Aires); STICERD-LSE Career Structures in Economics: Workshop and Policy Session (London)
Conference presentations: Exeter Workshop on Structural Transformation; CESifo Workshop on Trade, Market Failures, and Development (Munich); Society for Economic Dynamics Winter Meeting (Buenos Aires)
Invited seminars: Online Spatial and Urban Seminar (Toulouse School of Economics); U. Oxford; Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (Rome); Sciences Po (Paris); U. Autònoma de Barcelona
Discussant: Nobel Symposium in Economic Sciences: Microdevelopment Research in the Last 20 Years (Stellenbosch)