Korbel ranked 12th best place in the world to earn a master’s degree in international relations.
Korbel ranked 20th in the world for the best undergraduate degree in international studies.
Korbel ranked 12th best place in the world to earn a master’s degree in international relations.
Korbel ranked 20th in the world for the best undergraduate degree in international studies.
Professor of Practice
Rice Family Professor of the Practice of International and Public Affairs
Francisco Rodríguez is the Rice Family Professor of the Practice of International and Public Affairs at the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of International Studies. A native of Venezuela, he is also the founder of Oil for Venezuela, a non-profit organization focused on finding solutions to Venezuela's humanitarian crisis. He received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and an undergraduate degree in economics from Venezuela's Universidad Católica Andrés Bello.
Rodríguez has taught economics and Latin American studies at the University of Maryland at College Park, the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración (IESA), and Wesleyan University. He has held prominent positions in the public and private sector and international organizations, including Head of the Economic and Financial Advisory of the Venezuelan National Assembly (2000-2004), Head of the Research Team of the United Nations' Human Development Report Office (2008-2011) and Chief Andean Economist of Bank of America (2011-2016). Rodríguez was also a Greenleaf Visiting Professor at Tulane University's Stone Center for Latin American Studies, a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame and an International Affairs Fellow in International Economics of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Rodríguez is the author of four books and more than sixty research articles. His research has appeared in the American Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Growth, Journal of Macroeconomics, Journal of Politics and World Development, among other peer-reviewed journals. He is a frequent contributor to Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, The New York Times, Americas Quarterly, Foreign Policy and The Washington Post, among other influential publications. His most recent book, The Collapse of Venezuela: Scorched Earth Politics and Economic Decline, 2012-2020, will be published in Spring 2025 by University of Notre Dame Press.
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Sié Center, ICRS, Scrivner Institute
International Development, International Human Rights
The Elgar Companion to the Economies of Latin America and the Caribbean (editor). Edward Elgar. Forthcoming, 2025.
The Collapse of Venezuela: Scorched Earth Politics and Economic Decline, 2012-2020. University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming, 2025.
Cooperative Responses to Venezuela's Crisis: A Roadmap for Negotiations (with Giancarlo Bravo and Guillermo Guerrero), Oil for Venezuela, 2023.
Venezuela Before Chí¡vez: Anatomy of an Economic Collapse. (co-edited with Ricardo Hausmann), Penn State University Press, 2013.
"How Clientelism Works: Evidence from the Barinas Special Election," World Development, 184, December 2024.
"How Economic Sanctions Affect Human Development: Evidence and Policy Implications," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 25(3), August 2024.
"The Human Consequences of Economic Sanctions," Journal of Economic Studies, 51(4): 942-963, May 2024.
"Sanctions and Oil Production: Evidence from Venezuela's Orinoco Basin," Latin American Economic Review 31(6), September 2022.
"Do Shifts in Late-Counted Votes Signal Fraud? Evidence from Bolivia," with Dorothy Kronick and Nicolí¡s Idrobo, Journal of Politics 84(4), October 2022.
"Monotone Comparative Statics in the Calvert-Wittman Model," with Eduardo Zambrano, Economic Theory Bulletin, 10:105-116, 2022.
"Toward Sustainable Human Development in Venezuela: Diagnosis, Challenges and Economic Strategy," (with Guillermo Guerrero), Revista Tempo Do Mundo, 23:285-344, December 2020.
"Cleaning up the kitchen sink: Specification tests and average derivative estimators for growth econometrics," (with Cameron Shelton) Journal of Macroeconomics 38B:260-73, December 2013.
"The Declining Labor Share of Income," (with Arjun Jayadev) Journal of Globalization and Development 3(2):1-18, March 2013.
"Caught in a Poverty Trap? Testing for Single vs. Multiple Equilibrium Models of Growth," (with Cameron Shelton) Journal of Globalization and Development 3(2):1-25, March 2013.
"The HDI 2010: new controversies, old critiques," (with Jeni Klugman and Hyung-Jin Choi), Journal of Economic Inequality, 9(2): 249-288, June 2011.
"The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela's Maisanta," (with Edward Miguel, Chang-Tai Hsieh and Daniel Ortega), American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 3 (April 2011): 196-214.
"Is there a Numbers vs. Rights Trade-Off in Immigration Policy? What the Data Say," (with Mathew Cummins), Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 11(2), July 2010.
"Anarchy, State, and Dystopia: Venezuelan Economic Institutions before the Advent of Oil," (with Adam J. Gomolin), Bulletin of Latin American Research 28(1), January 2009, pp. 102-21.
"Freed from Illiteracy? A Closer Look at Venezuela's Robinson Campaign," (with Daniel Ortega), Economic Development and Cultural Change, 57(1) October 2008, pp. 1-30 (lead article).
"The Anarchy of Numbers: Understanding the Evidence on Venezuelan Economic Growth," Canadian Journal of Development Studies XXVII(4), 2006.
"The Political Economy of Investment in Human Capital," (with José Pineda), Economics of Governance. 7(2), 2006.
"Inequality, Redistribution and Rent-Seeking," Economics and Politics, Vol. 16 (November), 2004.
"Trade Policy and Economic Growth: A Skeptic's Guide to the Cross-National Evidence" (with Dani Rodrik), NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2000.
"Why Do Resource-Abundant Economies Grow More Slowly?" (with Jeffrey Sachs), Journal of Economic Growth, September 1999.
"Does Distributional Skewness Lead to Redistribution? Evidence from the United States," Economics and Politics, July 1999.
Global Economic Challenges
Economic Policymaking
Sanctions, Economic Statecraft, and Political Change
Ph.D., Economics, Harvard University, 1998
B.A., Economics (Economista), Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, 1992
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