International Trade · Macroeconomics · Geoeconomics
I study how trade and economic integration reshape growth and adjustment over time and across space—and how geopolitical power and fragmentation change those forces.
Economist at the International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group · Professorial Lecturer at George Washington University · Partner Scholar at UC San Diego's Globalization and Prosperity Lab.
Research
My research agenda lies at the intersection of international trade and macroeconomics. I study how economies adjust over time and across space to changes in market access, technology, and trade policy. My work brings growth and other macroeconomic dynamics into quantitative trade models, uses micro and spatial data to identify the underlying mechanisms, and extends this agenda to geoeconomics: how geopolitical power, conflict, and fragmentation shape trade and welfare.
How much of the gains from trade come from the creation of new products?
EU integration increased market access, product entry, R&D, and trade. I develop a dynamic general-equilibrium model combining Eaton–Kortum trade with Romer-style innovation to quantify static and dynamic gains from integration.
Market access → innovation → growth
Why does trade adjust slowly after shocks?
A model of staggered sourcing decisions rationalizes the gap between short- and long-run trade elasticities. Applied to the US–China trade war, adjustment frictions substantially amplify welfare losses.
Short-run vs. long-run adjustment
How does geopolitical power change optimal trade policy?
We combine cross-country evidence on military power and tariffs with a quantitative trade model in which geopolitical alignment, coercive power, and conflict outside options shape tariff choices.
Power and tariff protection
Working papers & current research
What are the long-run costs of fragmentation when trade also transmits ideas?
A multi-sector dynamic general-equilibrium model with international knowledge diffusion shows that decoupling can impose much larger welfare losses than conventional static trade models imply, particularly in lower-income regions.
How do export shocks reshape local employment across environmentally risky and sustainable activities?
Using Brazilian customs, administrative, and census microdata, we estimate the dynamic local labor-market effects of export exposure and show that the environmental composition of employment changes substantially over the adjustment horizon.
How do local labor markets adjust dynamically to foreign demand shocks?
We combine an instrument for export exposure based on foreign demand with a spatial framework and local labor-market evidence from Indonesia to trace the dynamic responses of employment, income, and welfare.
When tariffs rise, how much trade is rerouted through third countries?
We model indirect sourcing through an entrepôt and study how rerouting attenuates tariff pass-through and welfare losses, then test the mechanism using firm-level Mexican trade data around the 2018 U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.
Why are top earners so geographically concentrated?
Using U.S. county-level administrative tax data, we measure representation in the national top 1 percent and relate its spatial concentration to local industrial composition and exposure to inequality-intensive industries.
Does the local effect of a federal tax reform depend on who bears the tax change?
We combine county income distributions with federal tax reforms to construct heterogeneous local tax shocks and estimate their effects on employment, consumption, and local economic activity.
Policy & public engagement
My career has combined academic research with policy work. I currently work at IFC / World Bank Group. Previously, I worked inside the Brazilian federal government, at the IMF and World Bank, and in policy research organizations. I have advised politicians and senior officials, worked directly on economic policy—including trade reform—and written extensively for public audiences.
Senior Economic Advisor at the Office of the President of Brazil, working on trade reform and other economic-policy projects and advising senior decision-makers.
Selected policy work →Current economist at IFC / World Bank Group, with previous research and policy experience at the IMF and World Bank.
Dozens of op-eds and public essays in outlets including O Globo, Folha de S.Paulo, Valor, The Conversation, World Bank blogs, and VoxEU, alongside frequent interviews and research coverage.
Read op-eds and interviews →Teaching
I publish slides, derivations, handouts, and computational material from undergraduate and graduate courses in trade, macroeconomics, and statistics.
Ricardo through Melitz, trade policy, mathematical handouts, and Python data labs.
Course material → UC San DiegoGrowth facts, Solow and Romer models, investment, labor markets, and macroeconomic applications.
Course material → UC San DiegoDetailed PhD discussion notes on dynamic programming, growth, heterogeneous agents, and taxation.
Discussion notes → IESB · BrasíliaAn applied introduction to statistics, probability, data visualization, inference, and regression.
Course material →Code & data
Research repositories, replication packages, empirical workflows, trade-model code, and teaching notebooks in Python, Stata, Julia, R, Matlab, and other tools.
Browse code and replication material →Media & public engagement
Selected international coverage of my research. Each outlet below links to a piece discussing or featuring my work.