Award for Master's thesis on the raw materials boom in Chile
Alejandra Rodriguez-Morales was honoured with the Aníbal Pinto Santa Cruz Prize for her master's thesis on findings from the saltpetre era for possible forecasts for the lithium era.
Alejandra Rodríguez-Morales has been awarded the Aníbal Pinto Santa Cruz Prize for the best master's thesis on Chilean economic history between 2021 and 2023. This award is granted by the Chilean Economic History Association (ACChe) and recognizes outstanding academic works that contribute to new understanding of the country’s economic past.
Her master’s thesis, titled “A Historical Mirror? The Saltpetre and the Lithium Eras in Chile”, explores parallels between two of Chile’s major extractive booms: the saltpeter (or nitrate) mining cycle (late 19th–early 20th century) and the current lithium one. Using regional data and forecasting methods, she shows how past extractive experiences can help anticipate the economic and socio-environmental challenges of today’s lithium mining sector expansion. The thesis was written during her graduate studies at Lund University, Sweden.
Alejandra is currently a PhD researcher at the University of Lucerne, where her first dissertation chapter builds on this work. Titled “From Boom to Bust: The Structural Transformation of Chile’s Industrial Sector After the Nitrate Collapse”, it analyzes how the sudden end of the nitrate cycle shaped long-term regional inequalities in Chile using newly digitized historical data and causal inference methods. This chapter constitutes part of a broader doctoral research project on the long-run impacts of resource shocks.
Mester Thesis “A Historical Mirror? The Saltpetre and the Lithium Eras in Chile”
