Economist · development and complexity

Miguel Ángel
Santos

Director · The Growth Co-Lab (LSE)
Dean · School of Government and Public Transformation · Tec de Monterrey

Why some countries grow and others fall behind, and what can be done about it.
Read the latest essay Explore the research
Lo último El contrato social que falta

in a classroom at the Tec, Monterrey · 2025

Latest

An essay, an episode, a paper.

The full archive →

Featured quote · Prodavinci · 2023

I returned to Venezuela after six years that have felt very long. To paraphrase Tancredi Falconeri in Lampedusa's The Leopard, a few changes have taken place so that everything can stay the same.

Miguel Ángel Santos Venezuela six years on · Prodavinci · 31 January 2023

  • 0 Academic papers
  • 0 Essays and columns
  • 0 Press references
  • 0 Research themes

Atlas of areas

A map of the work, by theme.

From Venezuelan political economy to growth diagnostics in Namibia, Jordan or Chiapas: each area gathers the papers of two decades of applied research. One click takes you straight to the theme’s archive.

Podcast · hosted on Tec Sounds

The Policy Lab

Long conversations with economists, sociologists and politicians about the most pressing problems of development in Latin America and the emerging world.

Listen on

Travel notebooks

Chronicles written
in the field.

From Easter Sunday in Ntarama to a café in Reykjavik. The long essays where the economist writes as a chronicler, the literary side of his work.

Rwanda · 2018

Bitter lessons from the reconstruction of Rwanda

“The day I went to Ntarama and Nyamata was, by pure coincidence, Easter Sunday. The black Touareg turned left as it left the Nyarutarama checkpoint…”

Prodavinci · 10/02/2018 Read the chronicle →
Japan · 2019

Notes from Kyoto

On an economy that learned to grow old without collapsing, and what its discipline might have to teach the next generation of Latin American planners.

Prodavinci · 2019 Read the chronicle →
Iceland · 2020

The small economy of the geysers

How a nation of 370,000 people rebuilt its financial sector after going bankrupt in 2008. A chronicle of the boreal winter written from a café in Reykjavik.

Prodavinci · 2020 Read the chronicle →
Mali · 2017

Timbuktu, year zero

Field notes from the city that survived the jihadist occupation. What cultural reconstruction teaches about economic reconstruction.

Prodavinci · 2017 Read the chronicle →
Venezuela · 2023

Back to Caracas

“Caracas reminds me of one of those old clocks that haven’t been wound for a very long time.” A chronicle of the first return after six years.

Prodavinci · 31/01/2023 Read the chronicle →

On the ground

The places where it was learned.

Two decades of applied research and travel notes, on a real map. Scroll the list, the active place is the one passing through the center of your screen. Click to enter.

Active place on the map

Caracas Venezuela: crisis, sanciones y reconstrucción · 14 papers

Recent activity

The latest, in every format.

Essays, papers and field notes, a single stream ordered by date. Filter by format.

In the press

Cited, discussed and reviewed.

Appearances of MAS’s work in international media, academic blogs and official reports. Eight of the most recent.

  • London School of Economics

    Knowledge Diffusion as a Cornerstone of Economic Recovery in the Post-COVID World
    2022 Read

  • Naciones Unidas · DESA

    Promoting Sustainable and Inclusive Growth in Namibia
    2021 Read

  • Alnavío

    El equipo de Hausmann tumba las «evidencias engañosas» de Sachs y Weisbrot sobre las sanciones contra Maduro
    2019 Read

  • Banca y Negocios

    Venezuela necesita hasta 70.000 millones de dólares para superar la crisis económica
    2019 Read

  • El Mercurio

    El costo para que Venezuela salga adelante podría ser de US$ 80 mil millones
    2019 Read

  • The New Yorker

    Venezuela’s Food Crisis Reaches a Breaking Point
    2019 Read

  • El País

    ¿Cuántos días hay que trabajar en Venezuela para comprar un kilo de pollo?
    2018 Read

  • Financial Times

    IMF Crunches the Numbers for Possible Venezuela Rescue
    2017

Reading · a short library

The books I recommend to my students.

A deliberate, short library. Biographies of economists who didn’t follow the mainstream path. The authors who have shaped me most.

  • Princeton University Press

    Worldly Philosopher
    The Odyssey of
    Albert O. Hirschman

    Jeremy Adelman
    2013

    “The biography that changed how I think about the discipline.”

    Biography 740 pages
  • W.W. Norton & Company

    Home in the World
    A Memoir

    Amartya Sen
    2021

    “Economics as humanism, told by one of the greatest.”

    Memoir 464 pages
  • Wiley

    A Thousand Hills
    Rwanda’s Rebirth
    and the Man Who
    Dreamed It

    Stephen Kinzer
    2008

    “Indispensable for understanding what I saw in Ntarama.”

    History 396 pages
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    Rebuilding Devastated Economies in the Middle East

    Leonard Binder
    2007

    “What Jordan forced me to read twice.”

    Politics 284 pages
4 libros recomendados en clase

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