# Francisco Rodríguez (economist)

Francisco R. Rodríguez is a Venezuelan economist. From 2000 to 2004, he served as the head of the economic and financial advisory of the Venezuelan National Assembly (Spanish: Oficina de Asesoría Económica y Financiera de Asamblea Nacional). He also joined Torino Economics, the economic analysis branch of New-York based Torino Capital, as chief economist between 2016 and 2019, and served as policy advisor for presidential candidate Henri Falcón in 2018.

## Economic career

From 2000 to 2004, he served as the head of the economic and financial advisory of the National Assembly of Venezuela.
Rodríguez joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch in August 2011 as Chief Andean Economist, covering the economies of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. In 2012 he predicted that Chávez would be re-elected during the presidential elections that year. He joined Torino Economics, the economic analysis branch of New-York based Torino Capital in July 2016 as chief economist. Rodríguez left Torino Economics on 3 September 2019.
In May 2016, Rodríguez was part of a group of economists under an initiative promoted by the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to present an economic stabilization program to the government of Nicolás Maduro, who until then had refused to implement necessary monetary and fiscal reforms to contain prices, stabilize the exchange rate and foster production recovery. The plan was shelved by the Maduro administration.
On 2018, 20 May, the candidate Henri Falcón accused Maduro of rigging the presidential elections and refused to recognize the results. Both he and Rodríguez stated that the election was not valid. He has since become the Rice Family Professor of the Practice of International and Public Affairs at the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of International Studies and a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

## Selected Bibliography

* Ricardo Hausmann and Francisco R. Rodríguez, ed. (2014). Venezuela Before Chávez: Anatomy of an Economic Collapse. ISBN 978-0-271-05631-9.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez. (Forthcoming, 2025). The Collapse of Venezuela: Scorched Earth Politics and Economic Decline, 2012-2020. University of Notre Dame Press.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez. (December 2024). How clientelism works: Evidence from the Barinas special election. World Development
* Francisco R. Rodríguez. (July 2024). How Economic Sanctions Affect Human Development: Evidence and Policy Implications. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities
* Francisco R. Rodríguez. (May 2024). The human consequences of economic sanctions. Journal of Economic Studies.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez (2022). Sanctions and Oil Production: Evidence from Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin. Latin American Economic Review.
* Nicolás Idrobo, Dorothy Kronick, and Francisco R. Rodríguez. (September 2022). Do Shifts in Late-Counted Votes Signal Fraud? Evidence from Bolivia. The Journal of Politics.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez and Eduardo Zambrano. (April 2022). Monotone comparative statics in the Calvert–Wittman model. Economic Theory Bulletin.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez and Guillermo Guerrero. (December 2020). Toward Sustainable Human Development in Venezuela: diagnosis, challenges and economic strategy. Revista Tempo do Mundo.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez and Cameron A. Shelton. (December 2013). Cleaning up the kitchen sink: Specification tests and average derivative estimators for growth econometrics. Journal of Macroeconomics.
* Francisco R. Rodriguez and Arjun Jayadev. (March 2013). The Declining Labor Share of Income. Journal of Globalization and Development.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez and Cameron A. Shelton. (2012). Caught in a Poverty Trap? Testing for Single vs. Multiple Equilibrium Models of Growth. Journal of Globalization and Development
* Jeni Klugman, Francisco R. Rodríguez and Hyung-Jin Choi. (May 2011). The HDI 2010: new controversies, old critiques. The Journal of Economic Inequality
* Chang-Tai Hsieh, Edward Miguel, Daniel Ortega and Francisco R. Rodriguez. (April 2011). The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela's Maisanta. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez and Matthew Cummins. (May 2010). Is There a Numbers versus Rights Trade‐off in Immigration Policy? What the Data Say. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez and Adam J. Gomolin. (December 2008). Anarchy, State, and Dystopia: Venezuelan Economic Institutions before the Advent of Oil. Journal of the society for Latin American studies.
* Daniel Ortega and Francisco R. Rodríguez. (October 2008). Freed from Illiteracy? A Closer Look at Venezuela’s Misión Robinson Literacy Campaign. Economic Development and Cultural Change
* Francisco R. Rodríguez. (2006). The Anarchy of Numbers: Understanding the Evidence on Venezuelan Economic Growth. Canadian Journal of Development Studies.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez and José Pineda. (2006). The Political Economy of Investment in Human Capital. Economics of Governance.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez. (October 2004). Inequality, redistribution and rent-seeking. Economics and Politics.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez and Dani Rodrik. (2000). Trade Policy and Economic Growth: A Skeptic's Guide to the Cross-National Evidence. NBER Macroeconomics Annual
* Francisco R. Rodriguez and Jeffrey D. Sachs. (September 1999). Why Do Resource-Abundant Economies Grow More Slowly?. Journal of Economic Growth
* Francisco R. Rodriguez. (July 1999). Does Distributional Skewness Lead to Redistribution? Evidence from the United States. Economics and politics.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez and Dorothy Kronick. The Rise and Fall of the Venezuelan Economy in Valencia, Felipe, ed. (2023) Roots of Underdevelopment: A New Economic (and Political) History of Latin America and the Caribbean, Palgrave/Macmillan
* Francisco R. Rodríguez and Ricardo Hausmann. Why Did Venezuelan Growth Collapse? Hausmann, R. and Rodríguez, F. (2013) Venezuela before Chávez: Anatomy of an economic collapse.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez and José Pineda. Public Investment and Productivity Growth in the Venezuelan Manufacturing Industry in Hausmann, R. and Rodríguez, F. (2013) Venezuela before Chávez: Anatomy of an economic collapse.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez and José Pineda. Curse or Blessing? Natural Resources and Human Development, Handbook of Latin American Economics edited by Jaime Ros and J. A. Ocampo, Oxford University Press.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez. When Is Public Expenditure Pro-Poor?. Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics Global 2009 (Yifu Lin Justin and Boris Pleskovic, eds.,) Washington: The World Bank, 2010.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez. Understanding Fiscal Expansions in Roy, Rathin and Heuty, Antoine, eds. (2008) Fiscal Space: Policy Options for Financing Human Development. Earthscan.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez and Maria A. Moreno. Plenty of Room? Fiscal Space in a Resource-Abundant Economy in Roy, Rathin and Heuty, Antoine, eds. (2008) Fiscal Space: Policy Options for Financing Human Development. Earthscan.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez. Washington Consensus in Stearns, Peter (ed.) Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World, Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 548-9.
* Ricardo Hausmann, Francisco R. Rodríguez and Rodrigo Wagner. Growth Collapses in Carmen Reinhart, Andrés Velasco and Carlos Vegh, eds. Money, Crises, and Transition: Essays in Honor of Guillermo Calvo. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez. Venezuela's Revolution in Decline: Beware the Wounded Tiger, World Policy Journal, 25(1) Spring 2008.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez. An Empty Revolution: the Unfulfilled Promises of Hugo Chávez, Foreign Affairs 87(2), March/April 2008.
* Francisco R. Rodríguez. Factor Shares and Resource Booms: Accounting for the Evolution of Venezuelan Inequality in Cornia, G. A., ed. Inequality, Growth, and Poverty in an Era of Liberalization and Globalization, Oxford University Press, 2004.