About

I was born in Bariloche, in Argentine Patagonia. That alone explains a good part of who I am and what moves me.

I grew up attached to the outdoors — hiking, camping, anything that involves fresh air. I refill there. I like the surprise of working something out rather than the certainty of a guidebook with perfect instructions; I don't go looking for the most scenic view. I'd rather learn by exploring and taking some risk. I'm objective-oriented, but I enjoy the path.

Economics started early. To visit my grandparents I used to take a 21-hour bus ride, 1,600 km, from Patagonia to Buenos Aires, crossing a long sequence of landscapes and social realities. My mind would get lost for hours — and still does — in how you raise prosperity across settings that different, and how you create jobs that let people live a decent and fulfilling life.

Argentina, like the rest of Latin America, is deeply unequal. Its contradictions run from Nobel laureates to half its children in poverty. Economic argument — mostly about inflation — happens everywhere, every day: in the grocery shop, in the taxi, at every dinner. I genuinely enjoy hearing how other people see it, and I'm comfortable saying what I think and arguing it properly.

I've always been alert to those disparities and, from early on, wanted to understand where they come from and do something about them. Specialising in labour economics gave me a way in: informality, unemployment, wage gaps, skills mismatch. My approach to knowledge is a problem-solving one — I'm not satisfied with naming a market failure or an injustice, I start looking for what would fix it.

My approach to research is empirical. The spark usually comes from a conversation or from something happening in the world, not from a literature gap. I value theory, but my curiosity is driven by reality. Major change happens at the macro level, through transformative policy — but that policy should be informed by micro-level experience. Following Simone Weil's example of combining intellectual work with direct experience, I think understanding poverty asks for more than reading and writing about it. So I've also spent years in the places the data describes: coordinating an education centre for 70 young people in Villa 21-24 in Buenos Aires, and teaching English to adults seeking asylum in Nottingham. I don't think of research as a way to advance professionally. I think of it as scientific support for change.

Studying at the University of Buenos Aires taught me things beyond the academic ones, which were excellent in their own right. The most important: because the university is free, no one leaves with private debt. Free, of course, means paid for out of general taxes — so instead of a private debt, every graduate leaves with a social one. Any success afterwards is never purely individual; it already contains a social investment. In a country with that much poverty, receiving good public higher education carries real opportunity cost for everyone else. Whatever I manage to do carries the responsibility to narrow the access gap to the opportunities I was lucky enough to have.

Along the way I've built solid econometric and programming skills. I'm self-sufficient with large quantities of data from awkward sources, across different software, and with building research questions that are both empirically answerable and methodologically defensible. I believe policy decisions should be evidence-led, and in my own work I look hard for heterogeneous effects — what a policy does for the people with the least room to absorb a shock.

The trait I'd most want you to know is that I love learning: languages, sports, other people's ways of doing things. One problem usually has several solutions, and there's almost always a perspective nobody has tried yet. I'm an optimist, I adapt quickly, and I work well in multicultural teams. And I love teaching — economics at university, maths in secondary school, languages for NGOs supporting refugees.

I'm open to consultancy, research collaborations and policy projects, including on topics I haven't published on yet. If something here is useful to you, write to me.