Growth and Development in Macroeconomics

The workshop is a long-running, selective meeting place for macro-development research that connects rigorous work on firms, productivity, structural change, trade, labor markets, human capital, and institutions with policy questions.

• High-caliber intellectual leadership: past programs feature keynotes or plenary speakers including Dani Rodrik, Francisco Buera, Vasco Carvalho, Berthold Herrendorf, Hugo Hopenhayn, Ufuk Akcigit, Gene Grossman, Steve Redding, Richard Rogerson, Andrés Rodríguez-Clare, Pete Klenow, Samuel Kortum, and Ellen McGrattan.
• Papers presented at the workshop have subsequently appeared in leading journals, including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, the Economic Journal, and the Journal of Political Economy. This strong publication record reflects the workshop’s commitment to showcasing rigorous, innovative research at the forefront of growth and development.
• A productive joint format: several editions were organized with International Trade, widening the conversation around globalization, production networks, multinational firms, migration, firm dynamics, and spatial development.
• Policy connection without sacrificing rigor: programs have paired frontier papers with policy debates or panels involving organizations such as Development Bank of Latin America and Caribbean (CAF), the Inter American Development Bank (IDB), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC/CEPAL), the European Union, central banks, and universities in the region.

The series has broadened from classic questions of development accounting, productivity, and structural transformation toward richer interactions among firms, workers, technologies, networks, trade, and policy. Its identity remains distinctly macroeconomic: individual mechanisms are valued for what they reveal about aggregate development paths, cross-country differences, and policy design.

What Do We Offer?

• A proven intellectual community, not a one-off conference: the workshop has a visible decade-plus lineage and recurring scientific leadership.
• A broad frontier agenda with a clear center of gravity: submissions can range from micro-founded mechanisms to quantitative macro and policy, provided they provide new insights in growth or development.
• Serious exposure and feedback: programs consistently organize papers into focused sessions, often with senior chairs, invited talks, and policy-facing discussion.
• Global research with regional relevance: the workshop brings international scholars into conversation with Latin American researchers, universities, central banks, and development institutions.
• Crossfield reach: the Ridge forum offers natural bridges to international trade, labor, urban and spatial economics, environmental change, industrial organization, and political economy.

Submissions

We invite submissions at the frontier of research on the forces shaping productivity, structural transformation, firm and worker dynamics, and long-run development. Building on more than a decade of programs featuring leading scholars and research on misallocation, informality, innovation, human capital, trade, migration, production networks, climate, and policy, the workshop brings together international researchers with the Latin American academic and policy community. We welcome theoretically and empirically rigorous papers that connect microeconomic mechanisms to aggregate development outcomes and policy-relevant questions.

Research Directors

Working Papers