Bustos, Paula
ICREA at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF).
Social & Behavioural Sciences
Short biography
Paula Bustos is ICREA research professor at UPF, a Research Fellow at the European Economic Association and the CEPR and Co-Editor at the Journal of International Economics. She obtained her PhD in Economics at Harvard University and her Bachelor Degree 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 and is widely cited. Her research on agricultural productivity and structural tranformation has been funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council in 2017. Her new research line 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 closely 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 if 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.