I am a graduate student aand research assistant at MIT’s Department of Economics and an Economist (on leave) at the Economic Research Department of the Mexican central bank, Banco de México. Previously, I completed my undergraduate studies in Economics and Political Science at ITAM.

I am interested in combining economic theory, econometrics, data analysis techniques, and computational methods to inform economic policies and design political institutions conducive to welfare gains. While broadly curious, my current focus and research agenda concentrates on:

• Studying state capacity and provision of public goods and services for addressing misgovernance and preventing corruption.

• Understanding the international monetary system dynamics and global financial cycles to derive monetary policy recommendations for emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs).

Also, I’m increasingly interested in the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to natural language processing (NLP) and causal inference. When not thinking about these issues, I enjoy playing classical guitar and trekking.

Please note that the views or statements herein do not necessarily reflect those of Banco de México or any of my affiliations.

Feel free to contact me! (rcastroc [at] mit [dot] edu)

MIT Website