Dr. Isabel Z. Martínez

Economist

Portrait of Isabel Z. Martinez. Photo credit and copyright: Florian Bachmann florian@fotograf.ch Do not re-use without permission!
Photo and copyright: Florian Bachmann florian@fotograf.chPlease do not re-use without permission.

I research the distribution of income and wealth, how we tax these things, and how people adjust their behavior to taxes and other economic incentives. I am the founder and head of the research section Inequality and Public Economics at the KOF Swiss Economic Institute at ETH Zurich.


I am a CEPR and CESifo Research Affiliate, and a Fellow of the World Inequality Database (WID.world) and of the SIAW Institute at the University of St.Gallen. In 2021/2022, I was Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the City University of New York (CUNY).

Since 2018, I am a Member of the Swiss Competition Commission, elected by the Federal Council to represent the labor organizations. Previous to joining ETH Zurich in 2020, I worked as an economist at the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions SGB-USS.

My academic work — which has been published in leading scientific journals including the American Economic Review, The Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Journal of Urban Economics — has a strong policy focus. I also contribute regularly to print media or appear on radio and TV. I have been listed among the Top 10 of the Most Influential Economists in Switzerland by the leading newspaper NZZ, and I am among the Top 4% Female Economists (out of over 18,000 listed female economists) in the global RePEc database (based on last 10 years publications).


At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, I initiated trendEcon, an open-source project where together with other Swiss economists from academia and the State Secretariat of Economics (Seco) we developed daily economic indicators for Switzerland based on Google searches to monitor the economy in real time.


Here you find my full CV and my contact information.