A month after I started working for Prof. Finkelstein, she sent me to the field to get a better understanding of the interventions we are studying...Seeing the people we were helping out with our program and hearing their testimonials was really touching. It reassured me why I want to do empirical research for a living!

The Economics Program at Barcelona GSE has provided a great foundation for my MRes/PhD work. I highly value the rigorous training in quantitative methods, which has proved essential for my own research, as well as the input from all the teachers and professors. In fact, my PhD topic is based on an idea I had for a project at Barcelona GSE, and I am very grateful for all the support I have received for it.

From the first week I joined RBB Economics, I have been working on a multibillion dollar merger of two major orthopaedic companies. Until now I have spent most of the time with clients’ transaction data, working mainly on switching analysis, the purpose of which was to determine closeness of competition between the merging parties.

My responsibilities in the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Policy area range across pretty much all macroeconomic subjects that are related to policy. One of the projects I am working on right now is macroeconomic monitoring. For this project, I produce a bi-weekly briefing on the current situation across the continents. I am also linked to the El Salvador economic team, so I go on missions to assess the economic situation. All of the Economics master courses at Barcelona GSE are useful for this type of work. The ideas behind the models we studied provide a strong conceptual framework that helps guide policy and tells us where to look for vulnerabilities in the economy.

After working with applied macroeconomics, I can say that all the theory I learnt at Barcelona GSE has provided me with the ability to produce high-quality economic analysis in the real world.

BGSE and UPF are both well-known for cutting-edge research in macroeconomics, and given that I always liked statistics and econometrics in addition to macro, I was very happy when I was given the opportunity to study here. Also, Barcelona is an absolutely amazing place to study and live. Faculty and staff at both BGSE and UPF have always been very helpful and supportive, and they provided me with everything to focus on research.

The BGSE Economics master was certainly one of the most challenging years in my life. It was a tough reminder that nothing comes as a gift and that the initial difficulties can be overcome only through hard work and long hours. The BGSE lecturers' experience empowered my framing of the economic concepts, while the toolkit I acquired and its continuous refinement enabled me to discern the real essence of each model. With its rigorous curriculum, the BGSE master was a fast track to the frontier of Economics and definitely set me apart when I joined the PhD program at the LSE.

The year at the Barcelona GSE influenced my career a lot. My research interests are close to many of the topics that researchers at the Barcelona GSE work on and related to several classes I took during the master. During the master program, I was introduced to many of the modeling techniques I currently use for my research. I am still in touch with several of my professors of that year and talk to some of them about my work.