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Development economist working on human capital and political economy, combining structural estimation with high-frequency data. Research Professional with James J. Heckman at the University of Chicago, and builder of Qhawarina, a real-time open-data platform for Peru.

Education
2024–2025
University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy — Master of Arts in Public Policy. Merit Scholarship.
2013–2017
Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM) — B.A. in Economics, graduated with honors (GPA 3.9/4.0). Best Undergraduate Thesis.
2018
Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería — Diplomas in Applied Econometrics and Finance.
Research Interests

Primary: Development Economics · Early Childhood Development
Secondary: Political Economy · Labor Economics

Research Experience

Research Professional, Center for the Economics of Human Development · 2024–present
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

  • Work with Prof. James J. Heckman on early childhood skill formation and economic preferences.
  • Research examining how cognitive skills and personality traits relate to economic preferences in Chinese children, using structural modeling with CRRA and Expo-Power utility specifications.
  • Paper under review at Journal of Labor Economics.

Research Assistant, Harris School of Public Policy · 2024–present
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

  • Work with Prof. Christopher Blattman on gang recruitment vulnerability in Colombia.
  • Work with Prof. Martin Castillo-Quintana on game-theoretic models of extortion.

Research Professional (Pre-Doctoral Fellow) · 2023–2024
Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business, Washington, DC

  • Worked with Prof. Amory Gethin on the political economy of social movements.
  • Developed a machine-learning classification system using DeBERTa transformers to analyze congressional bill responses to the George Floyd protests and the Women’s March.

Research Analyst, Monetary and Capital Markets Department · 2021–2023
International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC

  • Co-authored IMF Working Paper on ethnic gaps and economic growth in Peru (with G. Salinas and Z. Yuri).
  • Research on political instability and macroeconomic outcomes across 180+ countries.
  • Supported country missions to Sweden, South Africa, and Caribbean nations.

Research Assistant, Monetary and Capital Markets Department · 2020–2021
International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC

Research Consultant, Pension Fund Department · 2019–2020
Inter-American Development Bank, Lima, Peru

Research Assistant, Centro de Investigación · 2018–2019
Universidad del Pacífico, Lima, Peru

Selected Research
  • Relating Cognitive Skills and Personality Traits to Economic Preferences: A Study of Chinese Children (with S. Feng, J.J. Heckman, Z. Yang) — R&R, Journal of Labor Economics. A structural model with sophisticated error structures separates preferences from deliberation quality; cognitive ability affects decision precision more than underlying risk preferences.
  • Innovation, Liberalization, and Competition — forthcoming, Journal of Business.
  • Commodity Booms and Violent Conflict — under review, American Journal of Political Science.
  • Electoral Pressure and Political Lying — under review, World Politics. A dynamic game of credibility against electoral pressure; on PolitiFact data (U.S. House, 2007–2025) final-term members lie 5.6–8.0 pp more than early-term members.
  • Import Liberalization, Not Export Expansion — under review, Journal of International Economics.
  • Fraud Allegations as Identification: A Within-Election Forensic Test — under review, Political Analysis. Turns a losing candidate’s own nullification challenges into the counterfactual; applied to Peru’s 2021 presidential runoff.
  • The Anatomy of a Nobel Prize — under review, Empirical Economics.
Other Working Papers
  • Automation Is Not a Sufficient Statistic: Robots, AI, and Inequality. Two automation frontiers; pooling robot and AI exposure destroys 98% of the explained variance in skill-premium changes across 447 U.S. commuting zones.
  • The Macroeconomic Consequences of Political Instability. Coups classified by institutional transition; a 4.2% impact-year TFP contraction concentrated in coups that displace democracies (Bjørnskov–Rode panel, 1960–2022).
  • Missing Mass and Minimum Wages. A bunching estimator on three Peruvian minimum-wage increases.
  • Identifying Monetary Policy Shocks in an Administered-Rate Economy: Evidence from Peru.
  • The Shining Path of Violence: Long-term Effects on Human Capital in Peru.
  • Spatial Sorting and Conflict Migration.

A complete, continuously updated list is on the Research page.

Publications
  • Chávez, C. (2024). “Minimum Wage and Ethnic Gaps: Who are the Winners?” Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, 7(2), 93–121.
  • Chávez, C. (2023). “The Effects of Mining Presence on Inequality, Labor Income, and Poverty: Evidence from Peru.” Mineral Economics, 36(4), 615–642.
  • Chávez, C. (2023). “Domestic Violence, Labor Market, and Minimum Wage: Theory and Evidence.” Review of Economics, 74(3), 195–233.
  • Chávez, C. (2020). “The Impact of the El Niño Phenomenon on Dry-Forest-Dependent Communities’ Welfare in the Northern Coast of Peru.” Ecological Economics.
  • Chávez, C. (2024). “Estimating the Effects of Financial Liberalisation on Governability and Social Stability.” Foreign Trade Review, 59(4), 588–614.
  • Chávez, C. (2024). “Latin American Firm Cooperation Payoff Evidence.” The International Trade Journal.
  • Chávez, C., Salinas, G., & Yuri, Z. (2022). “Closing Peru’s Ethnic Gaps Amidst Sustained Economic Growth.” IMF Working Paper 2022/180.

Additional peer-reviewed articles and the full list at Google Scholar.

Honors & Awards
2024
Merit Scholarship, University of Chicago
2023
GSAS Future Leader Fellowship, Tufts University
2017
Best Undergraduate Thesis Award, UNMSM
Conference Presentations
2026
Jinan University, Guangzhou (with S. Feng, J.J. Heckman, Z. Yang) · Institute for Fiscal Studies, London · Encuentro de Economistas, UNMSM, Lima
2023
IEA World Congress, Medellín, Colombia
2022
LACEA-LAMES Annual Meeting, PUCP, Lima · Bolivian Conference on Development Economics, La Paz
2021–2022
Annual Conference of Peruvian Economists, Lima
Teaching Experience
2020–2022
Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería — Instructor: Econometric Theory, Econometrics I
2015–2018
Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos — Teaching Assistant: Microeconomics, Macroeconomics
Technical Skills

Programming: Stata (advanced) · R (advanced) · Python (proficient) · Matlab (proficient)
Software: LaTeX · ArcGIS · MySQL
Methods: Structural estimation · panel data econometrics · causal inference · instrumental variables · machine learning · NLP
Languages: Spanish (native) · English (fluent)

Professional Affiliations

American Economic Association · Royal Economic Society · Econometric Society

References

James J. Heckman — Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, Department of Economics and Harris School, University of Chicago. jjh@uchicago.edu.

Amory Gethin — Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank. agethin@worldbank.org.

Vincent Pons — Byron Wien Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. vpons@hbs.edu.

Additional references available upon request.