Gregory Elacqua is Principal Economist in the Education Division of the Inter-American Development Bank, where he coordinates the division’s knowledge agenda and technical policy dialogue across Latin America and the Caribbean. He has spent more than twenty years designing, evaluating and scaling education reforms with governments in the region. His research and policy work cover teacher policy, school finance, student assignment and AI tools for students and teachers. He is lead author of Smart Spending in Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (2025).
Before the IDB he advised three Ministers of Education and the Senate Education Committee in Chile, helping design the laws that reshaped school finance, accountability, admissions and the teaching career, and directed the Public Policy Institute at Universidad Diego Portales. He has written many columns, and his work has been covered by The Economist, the Wall Street Journal and El País.
His research has appeared in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics, the Journal of Labor Economics and World Development, among others. He holds a PhD in Public Policy from Princeton University.