Mr. Christian Volpe Martincus

Christian Volpe Martincus is currently Senior Economist at the Integration and Trade Sector of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Christian has expertise in international trade, regional integration, and economic geography. He previously worked for the Ministry of the Economy of the Province of Buenos Aires and was advisor at the MERCOSUR Commission of the National Representatives Chamber in Argentina. In addition, he was researcher at the Center for European Integration Studies in Bonn, Germany. At the IDB we has been working on the impact of integration on specialization patterns, the role of export promotion in shaping countries’ export diversification profiles, the effect of certifications on firms’ export performance, the interplay between innovation and exports, the effect of transport costs on trade flows, and other international trade issues. He has recently led a large research project on the effectiveness of export promotion policies in Latin America and the Caribbean, which involved a deep cross-country institutional analysis of the entities tasked with carrying out these policies as well as detailed evaluations of their impact for a number of countries in this region. The final output of this project has been an IDB institutional report entitled “Odyssey in International Markets”, which was released in September 2010. Christian holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Bonn and a Master in Economics from the National University of La Plata (Argentina). He has presented in numerous international academic and policy workshops and conferences and has published on international trade and economic geography in several international professional journals, including the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, Review of International Economics, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Journal of Regional Science, Review of World Economics, and The World Economy.