Juan Soto

My research lies on the intersection of the fields of economic geography, international trade, development economics, and resource and environmental economics. Broadly speaking, it aims to develop a better understanding of the spatial economy for the design of policies that promote economic growth and development through more sustainable and inclusive forms of production. This includes topics on the welfare and productivity implications of the mining and trade of critical materials for the energy transition, global value chain upgrading in mineral commodity markets, and topics on structural change and the economic dynamics of urban agglomerations.

In my dissertation, entitled “Essays on Globalization, Commodities, and Local Economic Development”, I studied the market mechanisms through which the unintended consequences of commodity booms in resource-oriented local labor markets have been fostered by features of international trade, which has been intensified over the past few decades. These features include offshoring, the presence of multinational companies, and participation in global value chains. In particular, my Job Market Paper, “Booming Sector, Multinationals, and Local Economic Development”, explores the average and heterogeneous implications of a resource boom and bust in local labor markets considering the presence of multinational companies in the resource sector, which is an important feature of modern resource-rich economies and key to understand the extent to which the resource sector can foster a process of sustainable long-term local economic development.