Luis Garicano

Luis Garicano is Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Professor of Economics and Strategy at the London School of Economics. He was previously an Assistant, Associate and Full Professor of Economics and Strategy at Booth, and has held visiting positions at MIT’s Sloan School and at the London Business School. He is also a Research Fellow at the CEPR and an affiliate at the Center for Economic Performance.

Garicano's research focuses on the determinants of economic performance at the firm and economy-wide levels, on the consequences of globalization and information technology for economic growth, inequality and productivity (see here for an overview), and on the architecture of institutions and economic systems to minimize incentive and bounded rationality problems (see here for an overview). His empirical and theoretical research has been published, among other journals, in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of Economic Literature and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. In 2007, he received the Banco Herrero prize for the best economist in Spain under 40 years old.

Garicano pursued undergraduate studies at the University of Valladolid, his home town, and earned degrees in Law and in Economics. He then obtained a Masters in European Economic Studies from the College of Europe in Belgium in 1992, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago. His main supervisor was the late Sherwin Rosen, and he was also helped by the late Gary S. Becker as well as by Kevin M. Murphy and Canice Prendergast.

Apart from his academic research, over the last few years Garicano worked on policy issues related to the Euro crisis. He coauthored a document on a Eurobond proposal (a summary can be found here in the WSJ). He also worked on policy issues involving the Spanish post bubble economy, where he has undertaken applied, policy relevant research, on the economic reforms necessary in Spain, producing documents among others on the Spanish Savings Banks, the Spanish labor market, the productivity of the Spanish economy, and the reforms required to adjust the health and pensions systems to the demographic changes that Spain is experiencing. Much of this work is summarized in the book, "El dilema de España" which has reached the top of the non fiction lists. He was the co-founder (and an editor until August 2013) of Nadaesgratis, the leading blog in Spanish on economic affairs. He tweets occasionally on Spanish issues (in Spanish!) as @lugaricano.

Since 2015, Garicano has been the main economic adviser, in charge of the Economic, Knowledge and Employment Policy at Ciudadanos, a party that is now in Parliament with 32 seats. His work on this program is summarized in Recuperar el Futuro with Toni Roldán, who is the Speaker on Economic Affairs of Ciudadanos. In December 2016, Garicano was named Vice President of the European Alliance of Liberal Democratic Parties (ALDE).