The Swiss Society for Economics and Statistics (SSES) is the association of academic economists in Switzerland. Its aim is to promote economic research in Switzerland – with a particular focus on early-career researchers. The award ceremony took place at this year’s congress in St. Gallen on 4–5 June, where Alejandra Rodríguez-Morales presented her work. In awarding the prize, the jury recognised Rodríguez-Morales’ contributions to the collection of new historical data, her precise empirical methodology, and the new insights gained into the impact of negative economic shocks on persistent regional inequality.

In the paper entitled «From Boom to Bust: The Structural Transformation of Chile’s Industrial Sector After the Nitrate Collapse», Rodrìguez-Morales analyses how the sudden and irreversible end of Chile’s nitrate sector shaped long-term patterns of regional industrialisation by constructing the first systematic subnational panel dataset for Chile between 1909 and 1951 from newly assembled archival sources and applying causal inference methods.

The paper forms a chapter of her doctoral thesis on the long-term effects of resource shocks. Alejandra Rodríguez-Morales is a PhD candidate at the University of Lucerne in the Chair of International Economics under Prof. Dr Manuel Oechslin.

Further information

Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Volkswirtschaft und Statistik (SSES) 

About Alejandra Rodríguez-Morales