Andrés Irarrázaval (Santiago de Chile, 1995) is an economist trained at the University of Chile and the London School of Economics (LSE), where he obtained a Master’s in Economic History. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Economic History at LSE, under the supervision of Professors Tim Besley and Chris Minns, and is part of the “Analysing and Challenging Inequalities” Doctoral Programme at LSE´s International Inequalities Institute. His research focuses on development, political economy, and income distribution in the Global South, with an emphasis on institutional and historical determinants.
Andrés is also a Lecturer at LSE, leading the course “Latin America and the International Economy”. From 2021 to 2023, he lectured in Macroeconomics, Economic History, and Development at the University of Chile's Department of Economics. Before that, he worked on policy research and advisory work at the OECD’s Economics Department, Country Studies Branch (Directors’ Office, Paris). He is also affiliated with the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES).
His PhD project comprises three key areas:
Inequality and state capacity. This project examines the historical divergence in income inequality levels between the Global South and Global North by analysing institutional capacity to tax citizens and provide public goods. It draws on a novel dataset covering over 2,500 country-year observations of inequality and taxation from the 13th century to the present.
Constitutions and development. This work studies how different political systems — from autocracies to presidential and parliamentary democracies — shape economic development through their ability to create credible commitments. It introduces the first de jure measure of institutional “checks and balances” by coding 240 years of constitutional history (1783–2023) across more than 180 countries.
Colonial legacies and inequality. Revisiting the “colonial origins” literature, this project explores how colonial institutions continue to shape development outcomes in the Global South, particularly in Latin America. Using new historical data — including colonial censuses from over 100 countries — and a novel instrumental variable strategy, it aims to better identify long-run causal mechanisms from colonial rule to present-day institutions, inequality and growth.
PhD Supervisors
Personal webpage
Read it here: Andrés Irarrázaval
Curriculum Vitae
View it here: Andrés Irarrázaval CV