Andrés Irarrázaval (Santiago de Chile, 1995) has been trained as an economist at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Chile (FEN) and at LSE, where he obtained a Masters in Economic History. He is currently doing a PhD at the Economic History Department, LSE and is part of the "Analysing and Challenging Inequalities" Doctoral Program of the International Inequality Institute (III). His main research interests are development economics, political economy, and income distribution (including redistribution), focusing on its institutional and historical determinants.

Andrés is also a Patrocinated Researcher by the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), a Research Collaborator at the Economics Faculty of the University of Chile (FEN), and a research fellow at the Chilean Economic History Association (AChhe). Previously, he was a full-time researcher and lecturer of Macroeconomics and Economic History at the Economics Department of the University of Chile, -between 2021 and 2023 in Santiago. Before this, he worked in policy design, advice, and implementation in the Structural Policy Advice Unit at the OECD´s Economics Department in Paris. 

His PhD project comprises three key areas:

• A study of the impact of colonization on development, focusing on countries' institutional capacity, or lack thereof, to build a social and fiscal contract that checks elite power and allows providing the public goods essential for long-term growth.
• A study of the economic effects of constitutions, studying how various political systems—from autocratic regimes to presidential and parliamentary democracy —affect development by enabling -or hindering- the creation of the "credible commitments" and “political arrangements” necessary for progress (e.g., via promoting investments and trust).
• A study of the epistemology of development economics. Drawing inspiration from Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge, my goal is to assess how economic conditions, crises, and international power relations affect knowledge production, going from discursive formations (narratives) to the framing of the role of agents, markets, and the state in research. 

PhD Supervisors

• Dr Alejandra Irigoin (Economic History Department, LSE);  Dr Tim Besley (Economics Department, LSE)

Personal webpage

Read it here: Andrés Irarrázaval

Curriculum Vitae

View it here: Andrés Irarrázaval CV