Professor of Economics since 2011 Ph.D in Economics 2005 UPF Barcelona. Head of Department 2021-2024 and Director of the PhD Program 2013-2016, scientific coordinator of GRINS -Growing Resilient, Inclusive and Suistainable extended partnership financed by PNNR and president of the GRINS foundation. He works on political economics, economics demography, unified growth theory, democratization, theory and empirics of cultural values. He studies the emergence and implications of economic and political institutions, the role of exposure to human pathogens for social interactions and civil conflicts exploiting geo-referenced disaggregated data.
He has published in journals as AER, Econometrica, ReStat, AEJ Macroeconomics, Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Growth, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics, among others. PI in projects funded by MUR, EIEF, University of Bologna. Research Fellow: CEPR, London; IZA Bonn; CESIfo Munich; GLO.
VoxEU Column
Patterns of economic growth over time and across countries: Reconciling theory and evidence
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- Development 
- Macroeconomic policy
VoxEU Column
Medication against misery: How health interventions can address ill health and also prevent conflict
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- Health Economics 
- Politics and economics
VoxEU Column
Diseases and development: Does life expectancy increase income growth?
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- Development 
- Health Economics 
- Macroeconomic policy
VoxEU Column
Violence, democratisation and civil liberties: The new Arab awakening in light of the experiences from the “third wave” of democratisation
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- Politics and economics