Academic Background

BA (University of Los Andes, Bogota), MA (University of Toronto), PhD (University of Toronto)

Biography

Though born in Colombia, I lived in France, the United States, Yugoslavia, finally ending up in Canada. I completed my baccalureate studies in Economics at the University of Los Andes in Bogotà (Colombia). After working for the Foreign Trade Agency of the Colombian government I came to Canada where I earned a Masters of Arts and a PhD in Economics from the University of Toronto. I was a faculty member at Concordia University and at the University of Toronto, before coming to Laurier in 1995. My interests are mainly in governance and political economy issues. For my PhD dissertation I studied how economic shocks affect the fate of dictators and elected leaders. Throughout my graduate studies I became interested in policy making in parliamentary democracies. My scholarship includes applications of economic analysis in political economy and bargaining. Current research interests include the selection of bargaining solutions when bargaining opponents may be of different types, modeling intergovernmental negotiations, and understanding how voters influence policies in multi-party (>3) parliamentary democracies such as Canada. In the policy area I am interested modeling multilateral negotiations such those encountered in the intergovernmental federal negotiations between the Canadian Federal and Provincial governments or the multi-lateral negotiations of the European Union.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Public Economics, intergovernmental federalism, Microecomic foundations of Macroeconomic policy modeling, Game theory, Political Economy and Bargaining theory

Additional Information

Conference Organization

• Canadian Public Economic Group
  to be held at Laurier November 4-5, 2011
  Sponsors:
  • Laurier Centre for Economic Research and Policy Analysis (LCERPA)
  • Department of Economics, University of Waterloo
• The Political Economy of Bargaining 2008

Seminars of Interest

• Laurier Seminar Series in Computational Science and Applied & Statistical Modelling (CSASM)
• Economics Visiting Speaker Series

Game Theory Links

• Alvin Roth's Home Page. (Game Theory & Experimental Economics - Papers, Articles, Links, Conferences & more.)
• Ariel Rubinstein's Home Page. (Game Theory - Papers, Books, Course Material & Links.)
• David Levine's Home Page. (Game Theory - Papers, Course Material, Links & more.)
• Drew Fudenberg's Home Page. (Game Theory - Abstracts & publications.)
• Gambit (Game Theory Software by Richard D. McKelvey and Andrew McLennan.)
• Game Theory & Information Archive
• International Journal of Game Theory
• Paul Walker's Chronology of Game Theory
• Sergiu Hart's Home Page. (Game Theory - Abstracts & Links.)
• Memorial to Dr. Jeffrey Scot Banks Journal of Public Economic Theory