About

Orazio Attanasio is the Cowles Professor of Economics at Yale University. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Senior Fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic and Policy Research. After obtaining a PhD at the London School of Economics, he has taught at Stanford University and the University of Bologna, and served as a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a visiting professor at the University of Chicago. Before joining Yale, he was the Jeremy Bentham Professor of Economics at University College London. His research interests include household consumption, saving and labour supply behavior, risk sharing, evaluation and design of policies in developing countries, human capital accumulation in developing countries, early years interventions, micro-credit, and measurement tools in surveys. He has carried out evaluations of education financing and access programmes, including large conditional cash transfer programs, the impact of scholarships on school enrolment, and the effect of subjective expectations on the returns to education. His policy-focused work includes serving on advisory boards, evaluating social programs across countries such as Mexico, Colombia, India, Ghana, and Chile, and assessing pension reforms. Attanasio has been recognized with awards such as the Carlos Diaz Alejandro Prize by LACEA and the Klaus Jacobs Research Prize by the Jacob Foundation, and has held leadership roles including being elected 2nd vice-president of the Econometric Society.

Research topics

• Surgery
• Medicine
• Psychiatry
• Internal medicine
• Pediatrics
• Developmental psychology
• Gerontology
• Nursing
• Physical therapy

Selected publications

• Subjective Earnings and Employment Dynamics

  2026-04-07

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Subjective Earnings and Employment Dynamics

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Gene x Environment Interactions: Polygenic Scores and the Impact of an Early Childhood Intervention in Colombia

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Inequality in the early years in LAC: a comparative study of size, persistence and policies

  Oxford Open Economics · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Gaps in child development by socio-economic status (SES) start early in life, are large and can increase inequalities later in life. We use recent national-level, cross-sectional and longitudinal data to examine inequalities in child development (namely, language, cognition and socio-emotional skills) of children 0–5 in five Latin American countries (Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay). In the cross-section analysis, we find statistically significant gaps with inequality patterns that widely differ across countries. For instance, gaps in language and cognition for Uruguay and Chile are much smaller than those for Colombia and Peru. When turning to the longitudinal data, average SES gaps are similar to those of the cross-section in language but differ substantially in cognition, mainly in Uruguay where they emerge as more unequal when cohort effects do not operate. Importantly, we also find that the ECD gaps found at early ages (0–5) still manifest 6–12 years later in almost all locations and realms in which we have measures of early child development, but they do not increase with age. Results are robust to using different measures of inequality (income and maternal education). Gaps are smaller but generally remain when adjusting for possible explanatory factors (e.g. family structure, parental education, geographic fixed effects). To reduce ECD inequality and promote equality in later life outcomes, policymakers should look to implementing evidence-based interventions at scale to improve developmental outcomes of the most disadvantaged children in society.

  PublisherDOI

• Gene x Environment Interactions: Polygenic Scores and the Impact of an Early Childhood Intervention in Colombia

  medRxiv · 2025-05-11

  preprintOpen access1st author

  Abstract We evaluate impacts heterogeneity of an Early Childhood Intervention in Colombia, with respect to the Educational Attainment Polygenic Score (EA4 PGS) constructed from DNA data based on GWAS weights from a European population. We find that the EA4 PGS is predictive of several measures of child development, mother’s IQ and, to some extent, educational attainment. We also show that the impacts of the intervention are significantly greater in children with low PGS, to the point that the intervention eliminates the initial genetic disadvantage. Lastly, we find that children with high PGS attract more parental stimulation; however, the latter increases more strongly in children with low PGS. JEL Codes C21, J13, I24

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Gene x Environment Interactions: Polygenic Scores and the Impact of an Early Childhood Intervention in Colombia

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-05-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We evaluate impacts heterogeneity of an Early Childhood Intervention, with respect to the Educational Attainment Polygenic Score (EA4 PGS) constructed from DNA data based on GWAS weights from a European population.We find that the EA4 PGS is predictive of several measures of child development, mother's IQ and, to some extent, educational attainment.We also show that the impacts of the intervention are significantly greater in children with low PGS, to the point that the intervention eliminates the initial genetic disadvantage.Lastly, we find that children with high PGS attract more parental stimulation; however, the latter increases more strongly in children with low PGS.

  PublisherDOI

• Intergenerational mobility in socio-emotional skills

  Journal of Public Economics · 2025-06-26 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Gene X Environment Interactions: Polygenic Scores and the Impact of an Early Childhood Intervention in Colombia

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean: a wide-ranging review

  Oxford Open Economics · 2025-01-01 · 5 citations

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Gene X Environment Interactions: Polygenic Scores and the Impact of an Early Childhood Intervention in Colombia

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Costas Meghir

  510 shared

• Marta Rubio‐Codina

  Inter-American Development Bank

  73 shared

• Pedro Carneiro

  68 shared

• Emla Fitzsimons

  University College London

  62 shared

• Britta Augsburg

  Institute for Fiscal Studies

  61 shared

• Ralph De Haas

  Centre for Economic Policy Research

  58 shared

• Agnes Kovacs

  King's College London

  55 shared

• Sally Grantham‐McGregor

  University College London

  54 shared

Labs

• Cowles Foundation for Research in EconomicsPI

Awards & honors

• Carlos Diaz Alejandro Prize by LACEA (2016)
• Klaus Jacobs Research Prize by the Jacob Foundation (2016)