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Applied Economist
Applied Economist
Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics
University of Sussex
Writings and Research
Violence against teachers and the entanglement of schools in violent conflict in eastern DRC
2025
(Comparative Education Review)
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The Impact of Remittances on Crime in Mexico
2025
(Review of Development Economics)
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Teachers’ Well-being and Resilience in Contexts of Violent Conflict: Lessons from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Niger
2024
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This chapter focuses on the causes and consequences of violence against teachers in the DRC and Niger, building on research carried out by the BRiCE research consortium of the Institute of Development Studies and the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique de Bukavu. The chapter reflects on how to approach the difficult question of violence against teachers to ensure that the research is both thorough and ethical. It then presents the main causes of violence against teachers in the DRC, which are tied to the violent political economies in which schools and teachers are entangled, as well as different facets of teachers’ identities and status which can expose them to violence, and the fact that school-level conflicts can become violent. The chapter then documents the considerable impact of violence on teachers’ well-being, which generates high levels of PTSD among the teaching body and affects their work. The chapter then looks at how teachers navigate violent school environments and adapt their teaching practices to the challenges they face. The chapter then reflects on how Save the Children’s BRiCE programme dealt with the question of violence, and briefly presents a teacher training module developed by the project to strengthen teacher’s resilience to violence in the DRC.
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Teacher Wellbeing and Teaching Quality in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries: BRiCE in DRC and Niger
2022
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The BRiCE research project is a partnership between IDS and the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique de Bukavu (ISP Bukavu), and part of a larger education consortium led by Save the Children and funded by the European Union’s Directorate General for International Partnerships, Building Resilience in Crisis through Education (BRiCE).
This research project aims at understanding the role of education systems in providing a ‘safe learning environment’ in conflict-affected and fragile regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Niger, with a particular focus on the role of teachers. Long overlooked, the role of teachers has been the object of renewed attention in the education literature, but there is still limited analysis of the constraints they face and the role they play in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.
The research project has four inter-related research objectives: 1. Understanding violence against teachers. 2. Assessing project effects. 3. Understanding the role of teachers in children’s educational outcomes. 4. Building on teachers’ professional and practical knowledge of fragile conflict-affected contexts.
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Other working papers
"The Mental Health Toll of Exposure to Violence in Niger and the DRC"
"Assortative matching and intergenerational mobility"
"Intergenerational Dynamics of Illiteracy"
Other research projects
"Nicotine Parents: Intergenerational Dynamics of Smoking Behaviour"
"Capturing the leader: violence effects of a criminal strategy in Mexico"
"Education effects on Incarceration: Evidence from a Prison Census and a Policy Reform" (new)
"Agricultural Clusters, Land Productivity and International Trade"
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Education
PhD Economics (2021) - University of Sussex
MRes Economics (2017) - University College London (UCL)
MSc Economic Policy (2016) - University College London (UCL)
MSc Economics & Philosophy (2015) - London School of Economics (LSE)
BS Economics (2012) - Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM)
Public Gains, Private Strains: Public Investment and Private Schooling in Peru
2025
IZA Working paper No 18189
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Abstract: In the 2010s, Peru experienced an increase in public educational investment, a substantial improvement in public school learning outcomes, and an erosion in the private sector learning premium. We use longitudinal, geo-coded register data on primary schools and pupils in urban areas to study how the improvement in public schooling affected private schools. With a difference in differences (DiD) framework, we demonstrate that the increase in public school quality reduced enrolment and test scores in private schools, primarily in areas with lower education levels. A staggered DiD analysis shows that new public school openings also reduced enrolment in nearby private schools.
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Compulsory Schooling and Long-Term Outcomes: Evidence from a Nationwide Education Reform in Mexico
2025
(Working Paper - under review)
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Abstract: This paper examines the long-term and intergenerational impacts of Mexico’s 1993 reform extending compulsory schooling from six to nine years. Exploiting the age-based discontinuity in exposure, the study implements a regression discontinuity and instrumental-variable strategy to estimate the causal effect of education. The reform increased schooling on average, with disproportionately large gains among Indigenous and rural populations. These educational improvements translated into lasting shifts in fertility, child mortality, employment, and internal migration. Intergenerationally, parental schooling gains raised secondary and upper-secondary enrolment among children. By following a single reform across demographic, labour-market, and intergenerational domains, the paper provides a life-course perspective on how expanded schooling reshapes life trajectories. The results highlight the role of compulsory schooling in reducing structural inequalities and demonstrate that, in the context of a large middle-income country, such reforms can generate sustained and intergenerational benefits beyond immediate educational attainment.
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Economics of Minority Groups: Labour Market Returns and Transmission of Indigenous Languages
2023
World Development
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IZA Discussion Paper Series 2021 (PDF here)
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Setbacks and Challenges of Social Policy in Mexico
José Narro R., Diego de la Fuente S., & David Moctezuma N.
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Other published research
Javier de la Fuente H. & Diego de la Fuente S. (2014). "Desarrollo económico en México: indicadores de pobreza, desigualdad y salud (Economic Development in Mexico: Poverty, Inequality and Health)" Los retos del desarrollo humano y territorial (Book chapter).
Summary: A empirical research on sociodemographic factors in Mexico that offers a descriptive analysis of poverty, inequality, and access to health. The research highlights the stark inequalities that exist and its geography.
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Diego de la Fuente S. (2014). Land Productivity Changes in a Trade Liberalization Environment: Mexico under NAFTA. Theoretical Economics Letters, 4(03), 221.http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=44803
Abstract: The focus if this research is agricultural land productivity in Mexico and the sources behind its changes. The study takes place in a period that runs from 1990 to 2011, one of large structural transformations in the Mexican economy. The study offers answers regarding how the sector has adapted in terms of crop selection, showing that a large share of agricultural changes happened due to intrinsic changes in crop productivity. Most of these changes, however, were the result of shifting patters of production across states., with one quarter of total productivity changes resulting from a better selection of crops.
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Conferences and Workshops
2024: European Association for Labour Economists, Bergen, Norway. 2021: Sussex University, United Kingdom (Festival of Research). 2020: Annual World Conference in Economics, Berlin, Germany, organised by EALE-SOLE-AASLE; Sussex University, United Kingdom (Economics Presentation Series, February and May); European Economic Association Annual Conference, Rotterdam, Netherlands (co-author). 2019: IZA Workshop on Labour Markets, St. Petersburg, Russia (Workshop/presentation). Royal Holloway (Presentation), United Kingdom; Cambridge University (Panellist Symposium of Mexican Studies), United Kingdom. 2018: London School of Economics (Mexico Week), Royal Economic Society Annual Symposium Junior Researchers (Discussant).
Reach out
IZA Workshop on Labour Markets, St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2019
http://conference.iza.org/conference_files/Transition_2019/viewProgram?conf_id=3245
https://hpatrinos.com/2019/09/30/skills-preferences-and-labor-market-outcomes/
"Be still and know"
"Cuncti adsint meritaeque expectent praemia palmae"
"Rerum Cognoscere Causas"
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