Felipe Barrera-Osorio

Felipe Barrera-Osorio is an economist working on the economics of education. He holds a Ph.D in Economics from the University of Maryland, College Park, U.S.A. and a B.A. in Economics from Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia. Between 2004 and 2006, he was the Deputy Director of the Colombian think-tank Fedesarrollo; moved to the United States in 2006 to work as a senior economist at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. and in 2011, he joined the Faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education as an Assistant Professor of Education and Economics. Dr. Barrera was promoted to Associate Professor in 2015 and is part of the policy committee of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and affiliated with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard. Since 2007 he has been part of the executive committee of LACEA's Impact Evaluation Network , which he helped to create. In 2008, Felipe Barrera-Osorio was awarded the Juan Luis Londoño Medal for research in education. The recognition is given every other year to a Colombian economist under the age of 40. His research agenda is defined by three main characteristics: design of actual policies, use of causal inference, and focus on developing countries. He sees his agenda driven by actual policies, in contrast to purely theoretical considerations and is interested in causal inference, using statistical tools to evaluate educational policies. His research is situated in less developed countries, where (approximately) 89% of the world’s children aged 0-15 years reside. His two main areas of research are, first, demand-side interventions to increase human capital investment, above and beyond effects on enrollment; and second, private provision of public education and its effects on student achievement and educational distribution. This agenda research extends across countries on three continents: Africa, Asia and Latin America.