I am an economist working on child and adolescent development in low-resource settings. I am committed to research that can contribute to positive societal change by improving health, education, and food security for children and adolescents.
I am an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Barcelona School of Economics. I am a Jacobs Foundation Alumni (2022-2025), and a European Research Council Starting recipient (2023-2027). I am a J-PAL invited researcher, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute of Economics (IEB), and a board member in the IPERC at the University of Barcelona. At IEB, I co-lead the research line on development economics. As child development is complex, my work is highly interdisciplinary, lying at the intersection of economics, global health, education, and developmental psychology. I collaborate with researchers and practitioners across these fields to generate contextual evidence that can inform effective policies for children and adolescents. You can read more about my research journey and what motivates my work in this BOLD blog interview. Before joining the University of Barcelona, I worked at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, where I was part of the Young Lives study, and spent a year as a visiting researcher in the Economics Department at the University Pompeu Fabra. I have also worked as a consultant on child development and related policy issues for the University of Pennsylvania, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the World Food Programme, and the European Commission, among others. I also care deeply about building stronger research communities and creating opportunities for scientists, especially early-careers or from lower-represented groups. I serve on the board of the Association of ERC Grantees, and I contributed to launch SPANDE, the development economists network in Spain, by hosting its first conference in Barcelona in October 2023. More recently, I founded the BCN-Dev Meetings, an informal network supporting early-career researchers working on development themes in Barcelona. |
September 2026: Our 11-year long experimental panel of Ghanaian children keeps going! J-PAL has funded a new round of surveys to track the QP4G-LEAD children up to age 16/17.
July 2025: It was fun to be interviewed by 'Teachers' voices' on how parents can support adolescent development! Listen to the podcast here March 2025: Two new papers out! Here is our new method to incorporate equity and productivity effects from educational or other programs that affect multiple outcomes, and here a validation of the commonly-used 'Strenghts and difficulties questionnaire' in Ghana. July 2024: New working paper and two grants! I got two grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science, to expand my ERC project in new directions. Also, here is our new working paper presenting a new conceptual framework and literature review on public works and climate resilience January 2024: New working paper! A ‘smart buy' for all? Unequal and unintended consequences of a messaging program for child education - UB Economics WP series August 2023: New papers out! - The Rise and Fall of SES gradients in Height around the World - Journal of Health Economics - Improving learning in low and middle income countries - Journal of Benefit Cost Analysis |
Get in touch! [email protected]
Follow me on Bluesky: @betta.aurino.bsky.social
CV
Google Scholar citations
Follow me on Bluesky: @betta.aurino.bsky.social
CV
Google Scholar citations
