Roberto Rigobon
Education
Ph.D., economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; M.B.A., Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administracion (IESA); B.S., electrical engineering, Universidad Simon Bolivar
Summary of Experience
Dr. Rigobon is an economist who specializes in international, monetary, and developmental economics. His research focuses on the causes of balance-of-payments crises and financial crises, and the propagation of them across countries. Dr. Rigobon cofounded MIT’s Billion Prices Project, an academic initiative that uses prices collected daily from more than 400 retailers in more than 50 countries to conduct economic research. The data-gathering mechanism has been featured in The New Yorker’s “The Financial Page” section, where it was referred to as “the first real-time inflation index.” Dr. Rigobon has authored and coauthored papers that have been published in refereed journals, including The Journal of Portfolio Management, Journal of Applied Econometrics, and the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics. He is currently an associate editor for Review of Economics and Statistics and received the Excellence in Refereeing Award in 2009 from the American Economic Review. He has also received MIT’s Teacher of the Year award three times, the Excellence in Teaching award three times, and the Samuel M. Seegal Prize, which recognizes a professor who “inspires students in pursuing and achieving excellence.” Dr. Rigobon has been a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research since 2003.