Scientific Committee

Alejandra is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Santiago de Chile. She is a researcher specializing in the fields of Experimental Economics and Behavioural Economics, she is interested in how humans make decisions and interact with others. Her current research focuses on a major project entitled: Aversion to inequality in Chile: an investigation of the interaction between individual and social preferences. The central objective of her research lies in comprehending the intricate dynamics of human decision-making and social interactions.

In her academic pursuits, professor Vásquez demonstrates a profound fascination with the multifaceted factors that shape human behavior. Recognizing that cognitive, contextual, environmental and emotional elements significantly influence our actions. She acutely focuses on the examination of social preferences, empathy, conscientious consumption choices, wellbeing, and social dilemmas. Through meticulous investigation and analysis, she seeks to shed light on the underlying mechanisms that drive individual choices and cooperation in economic settings.

Scientific Collaborations:
She is a collaborating member of Unica-BERG, an interdisciplinary group of researchers interested in the experimental study of the socio-economic, cognitive and neuroscientific aspects of individual and collective decision making. The group is based at the University of Cagliari in Italy. UNICA-BERG Behavioral Economics Research Group (https://people.unica.it/berg/people/)

• Visiting researcher at the University of Klagenfurt – Austria (May-June 2022) Wisdom, appreciation, moral choices and responsible consumption across cultures. With Dr. Judith Glück.
• Sustainable Campus Network, Coordinator of the culture and sustainable behavior group and participates in network research.
• Globusdoc grant University of Cagliari for research internship in the United States, 2016. De Paul University in Chicago – USA and University of Chicago, attended the Behavioural Economics course with Dr. Richard Thaler.

Vittorio Pelligra is Associate Professor of Economics (13/A2) and Co-ordinator of the PhD program in Economics and Business. He teaches Economic Policy, Economics of Information and Behavioral Economics. His research interests are experimental and behavioral economics, civil economy and social and cognitive neurosciences. He coordinates the BERG, (Behavioral Economics Research Group) at the University of Cagliari, is research fellow of CRENoS (Centre for North-South Economic Research), is also a member of the scientific Committee of SEC – Scuola di Economia Civile. Vittorio is also co-founder of SmartLab and Wecoop, two companies active in the fields of data science and edutainment. He contributes to the #MindTheEconomy column, which appears every Sunday in the financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.

Her research is situated at the intersection of developmental psychology and social psychology, focusing on understanding how individual and contextual factors interact over time to promote better living conditions, particularly among adolescents and youth. Specifically, she seeks to apply the science of development to the dynamic and longitudinal study of prosocial behaviors and civic and political engagement in a way that reduces social disparities and fosters social cohesion.

She has developed and leads the ProCíviCo project, an applied research initiative that aims to promote prosocial and civic participation in the school context. Additionally, she has developed school intervention projects to promote prosociality in Italy and various regions of Colombia.

Currently, she coordinates the Public Policy Unit (Evidence, Connection, and Advocacy, ECI) at the Center for the Study of Conflict and Social Cohesion in Chile, COES, where she is also an associated researcher.

She collaborates with an active international network of researchers who share the vision of social change through academia, hailing from Italy, Spain, Canada, Argentina, Colombia, the United States, and Brazil.

Her most recent research inquiries revolve around the processes involved in the micro-level of social cohesion, particularly the relationship between social inequality and diversity, encompassing dimensions such as social class, migratory status, ethnic origin, and gender.

Martin Leites is a Professor at the Instituto de Economía (Iecon) of the School of Economics and Administration at the Universidad de la República del Uruguay (Udelar) in Uruguay. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the field of Microeconomics and the economics of inequality and poverty. His interests and expertise lie at the intersection of economic inequality, behavioral economics, and the microeconomics of development. His research agenda aims to enhance the understanding of how inequality impacts people’s behavior, leading to consequences in terms of welfare and efficiency, both at the individual and collective level. He is a member of the inequality and poverty research group (IECON) and the National System of Researchers (Nivel I- SNI), and collaborates with the group of ethics, justice, and economy (IECON). Additionally, he serves on the scientific Committee of the Ridge workshop on Inequality and Poverty. Martin has coordinated several research projects on the subject and has collaborated with public institutions in Uruguay in discussing, designing, and evaluating policies. His work appears among others, in The Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Journal of Economic Inequality. He holds a degree in Economics from the Universidad de la República del Uruguay, a Master’s degree, and a PhD in Economics from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.

Marta is an economist from Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Economics from LUMSA University (Rome, Italy). She has been a visiting scholar at the Institute of Aging at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, USA) and has collaborated with research groups at the University of Milan-Bicocca within the longitudinal research project “Italian lives”, and at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (Lugano, Switzerland) within the project «Analysis of the population in a situation of vulnerability: Exploratory study in the municipality of Mendrisio». Currently, Marta is a research fellow in Political Economy and lecturer of the courses Judgment and Managerial Decision Making and Research Methods and Statistics at SOPHIA University (Florence, Italy). Her main research interests include: social preferences; social capital; multidimensional well-being and poverty measures; income and health inequalities.