Gerard Padró i Miquel appointed Samuel C. Park Jr. (B.A. 1925) Professor
Gerard Padró i Miquel, a political economist and expert on the political frictions that lead to economic underdevelopment, has been appointed the Samuel C. Park Jr. (B.A. 1925) Professor of Economics and political science, effective immediately.
He is a member of Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), in the departments of economics and political science.
A graduate of Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Padró i Miquel holds an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the Yale faculty in 2018. He previously held faculty positions at Stanford and the London School of Economics.
In his research, Padró i Miquel explores the interplay between politics and economics as a barrier for development, with a focus on civil conflict, corruption, accountability, and the politics of non-democratic regimes. His work is inherently cross-disciplinary, drawing on the tools of economics to reveal how political systems shape development, and he has significantly advanced our understanding of the political economy of developing countries and the ethnic underpinnings of dictatorships and civil war.
His numerous influential papers address topics that range from how divided societies give rise to unaccountable leaders, to how strategic risk can generate open, violent conflict. He has also delved into the political economy of reform-era China. His broad and deep expertise is highly valued by organizations around the world. Currently, he sits on the Economic Policy Advisory Council of the Government of Catalunya, serves as research associate to the National Bureau of Economic Research, and as a research fellow at the Bureau for Research in the Economic Analysis of Development and the Center for Economic Policy Research.
In recognition of this work, Padró i Miquel has held fellowships from the U.S. Department of Defense Minerva Research Initiative, the Fundación Ramón Areces, and the Bank of Spain; awards from the Fundación Banco Herrero; and grants from the National Science Foundation. He is a highly sought-after speaker, and his recent engagements have taken him to Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, MIT Sloan School of Management, the University of California-Berkeley, Harvard, the World Bank, the University of Oslo, the Central European University, and other institutions around the world. He served as co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics, and as associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Economica, the Journal of the European Economic Association, and the Journal of Developmental Economics.
At Yale, he is the director of the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy, a role he has held since 2018. He has chaired or participated in search committees in both the Department of Political Science and the Department of Economics, and is a dedicated mentor to numerous junior faculty colleagues. In addition, he is a member of the executive committees of the MacMillan Center, the Economic Growth Center, and the Ethics, Politics, & Economics program, and he served on the Social Sciences Tenure and Appointments Committee, the Social Sciences Advisory Committee, and on numerous other FAS- and university-wide bodies. He offers graduate and undergraduate-level courses on economic development, political economy, and economic analysis of conflict.
