Giorgio Chiovelli

IEA: Can you tell us a little bit about your life story, what got you interested in economics, and how you decided to pursue an academic career?

Giorgio: I am from Italy but live in Uruguay, where I am an Associate Professor in the Economics Department at Universidad de Montevideo. Before moving to Uruguay, I had the chance to live in a few exciting places in Europe: I hold a Master’s degree from the Barcelona School of Economics and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Bologna for my Ph.D. Additionally, I held a Research Fellow position at the London Business School.

Becoming an academic economist was not in my plans after high school. When I started my bachelor’s in political science at the University of Bologna, my primary ambition was to become a diplomat. I was deeply fascinated by international relations, history, and politics. My perspective began to shift during a macroeconomics course taught by Matteo Cervellati. This course was very interesting; it unveiled the potential of economics as a field that could address my interests in politics and global affairs. His lessons delved into democratization, conflict, and demographic transition, illustrating how economic theories and models could be applied to understand and analyze political phenomena. Moving to Barcelona for my master’s in economics at BSE was another pivotal moment in my academic journey. While catching up on micro theory and metrics, I also explored political economy, economic history, and applied econometrics. I attended several seminars on long-term development and growth at BSE that exposed me to cutting-edge research ideas. In particular, I remember a talk by Stelios Michalopoulos. In his work with Elias Papaioannou, he explored the historical implications of the Congress of Berlin and its role in shaping contemporary conflict patterns in sub-Saharan Africa. This blend of history and econometrics was the research I aspired to pursue.

My research agenda continues to explore the intersections among political economy, growth, and economic history. I have worked and continue to work in areas such as the political economy of consolidating democracies; post-conflict management studying, for example, the aggregate economic effect of landmine clearance or the impact of forced displacement on human capital; the political economy of trade agreements; and historical comparative development in Africa and Latin America.

IEA: In your recent work, you study the impact of agricultural trade liberalization on economic activity and political violence in emerging countries. Can you briefly summarize your findings? What made you interested in this topic?

Giorgio: Trade liberalization is often promoted as a pathway to economic prosperity but also creates winners and losers. This has led to increased political polarization in high-income countries, but what happens in low- and middle-income countries is less understood. Contrary to what standard trade models predict, globalization has not reduced inequality in these emerging economies. Instead, we found that it triggers distributional conflict and increases political violence, particularly in fragile states. To explore this, my colleagues Francesco Amodio, Leonardo Baccini, Michele di Maio, and I examined all preferential trade agreements (PTAs) signed between 25 low- and middle-income countries and their high-income trade partners from 1995 to 2013. Focusing on the agricultural sector, we combined data on tariff cuts by crop with highly detailed information on the suitability of different regions to produce those crops provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization. This allowed us to compare areas within countries that are more or less suited to agriculture before and after implementing each PTA. We used nighttime luminosity to measure economic activity and geo-referenced information from a media-based database to track political violence. Our findings indicate that if these countries had not entered into any Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs), economic activity would have been 2% lower. However, political violence would have been 7% lower. Interestingly, the surge in political violence was not uniform; it was more pronounced in urban areas where agricultural production is less labor-intensive, and the crops affected by trade liberalization are also consumed locally. These results suggest that agricultural trade liberalization can exacerbate distributional conflicts when workers and consumers don’t share the gains from trade, with urban areas being particularly vulnerable.

Our study underscores a critical point for policymakers: while trade liberalization can spur economic growth, it can also lead to political instability if the benefits are unevenly distributed. Hence, it is crucial to complement trade policies with measures that address these imbalances to prevent potential violence and instability. The intersection of economic policy and its real-world impacts on societies stimulated my interest in this topic, especially in regions where the political fabric is delicate. Understanding these dynamics is key to crafting policies that promote sustainable and inclusive growth.