Name Francisco Rodriguez | Role Economist | |
Institution Bank of America Merrill Lynch, United Nations Human Development Report Office, Wesleyan University Alma mater Harvard University, Andres Bello Catholic University Education Harvard University, Andres Bello Catholic University | ||
Francisco R. Rodriguez is a Venezuelan economist and the Chief Andean Economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He has taught economics and Latin American studies at University of Maryland at College Park and Wesleyan University. From 2000 to 2004, he served as the head of the Office of Economic and Financial Advisory of the Venezuelan National Assembly (Spanish: Oficina de Asesoria Economica y Financiera de Asamblea Nacional) during the presidency of Hugo Chavez.
Contents
- Academic contributions
- Rodriguez and the Chavez Administration
- Rodriguez at UNDP 2008 2011
- Rodriguez at Bank of America 2011 present
- References
Rodriguez received an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, and an undergraduate degree in economics from Venezuela's Universidad Catolica Andres Bello. He has been an associate editor of Economia: Journal of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association since 2008.
Academic contributions
Rodriguez has written more than 40 papers on economic growth, development economics, political economy and the Venezuelan economy. These include "Trade Policy and Economic Growth: A Skeptic's Guide to the Cross-National Evidence" (joint with Dani Rodrik), "Why Do Resource-Abundant Economies Grow More Slowly?" (joint with Jeffrey Sachs), "Inequality, Redistribution and Rent-Seeking" and "Cleaning Up the Kitchen Sink:Specification tests and average derivative estimators for growth econometrics" (joint with Cameron Shelton). He has also co-edited, jointly with Ricardo Hausmann, the book Venezuela Before Chavez: Anatomy of an Economic Collapse.
Rodriguez and the Chavez Administration
Rodriguez was an early supporter of the Chavez administration. In 2000, he was elected with the support of both opposition and government parties to head the National Assembly's Economic and Financial Advisory Office. Under his tenure, the office produced several reports that were critical of official economic policy, eventually leading to his ouster by the pro-government majority in March 2004. His differences with chavismo as well as with Venezuela's opposition were set out in a number of articles published after he returned to academia at Wesleyan University in 2005. His article, "An Empty Revolution: The Unfulfilled Promises of Hugo Chavez", was published in Foreign Affairs, a podcast "Rodriguez: Venezuela Nationalizations Might Be A 'Smokescreen'" was hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, and he has been quoted a number of times in media reports on the Chavez administration. He also published several assessments of Chavez-era social end economic polocies in academic journals, including "Freed from Illiteracy? A Closer Look at Venezuela´s Mision Robinson Literacy Campaign" and "The price of political opposition: Evidence from Venezuela's Maisanta".
This extract from his Foreign Affairs article illustrates Rodriguez´s differences with the Chavez administration:
DePaul University and the Financial Times have hosted discussions focused on the debate over Chavez's economic policies between Mark Weisbrot and Rodriguez.
Rodriguez at UNDP (2008-2011)
In 2008, Rodriguez became the Head of Research of the United Nations Human Development Report Office. He coordinated the research for three influential reports: Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development and Sustainability and Equity: A Better future for All.
Rodriguez at Bank of America (2011-present)
Rodriguez joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch in August 2011 as Chief Andean Economist,covering the economies of Colombia, Peru and Venezuela. In 2012 he successfully called the Venezuelan presidential elections with an out-of-consensus prediction that Chavez would be re-elected by a comfortable margin. He has argued that Venezuela carried out an external adjustment via quantities instead of prices during the Maduro administration, making the potential output and inflationary costs of internal price adjustment lower than typically believed. In September 2014 he responded to a Project Syndicate article by Ricardo Hausmann and Miguel Angel Santos which had criticized the Maduro administration for continuing to honor debt service despite pervasive scarcities of basic goods. In his response, Rodriguez argued that scarcity was driven by relative price distortions and should be addressed by loosening the country´s tight price and exchange controls rather than defaulting on its debt.