Florencia Lopez Boo

Dr. Florencia Lopez Boo holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford, where she was granted an Oxford University Press Award/Clarendon Scholarship, a master’s in Development Economics from the University of Namur, a master’s in Economics from the Catholic University of Louvain, and a bachelor’s in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires.

Her work uses randomized controlled trials and interdisciplinary approaches to identify innovative and scalable ways to improving the lives of children and their families’ lives, combining the perspectives and methods of applied labor and development economics with behavioral sciences, neuroscience, and developmental psychology. In particular, her research focuses on rigorously evaluating social programs implemented at a national scale in low- and middle-income countries, with an emphasis on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). She published more than 50 articles across a variety of disciplines and journals like the Lancet, the Journal of Human Resources, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, Child Development, JAMA and Pediatrics. The rigorous policy evaluations she has conducted have had a substantial policy impact, prompting governments to make broad changes.  Her research has been featured in The Economist, El Pais, and the Washington Post, among others.

Prior to joining NYU, she was a Lead Economist at the Social Protection and Health Unit of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), where she led the Early Childhood Development (ECD) agenda, the IDB ECD Innovation Fund, the knowledge agenda of her unit, and an initiative on behavioral economics and social policies. She advised LAC governments on the design, implementation, and evaluation of human development public policies, particularly on child development, social protection and health. She is an affiliated researcher at the Department of International Development of the University of Oxford and founding member and former Head of the LAC Economics Association Behavioral Insights network (LACEA-BRAIN). She is also a member of various global boards and an active promoter of diversity: she was a founding member of networks of women economists globally and in LAC.