Marco Martinez

Welcome! 

I am an Assistant Professor (Ricercatore Tenure-Track) of economic history at the University of Pisa and affiliated at the Institute of Economics of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, where I obtained my Ph.D. in Economics under the supervision of Alessandro Nuvolari. From January 2026 to July 2027, I will be a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), supported by the Fulbright Program.

My research focuses on the economic history of innovation, industrial policies and gendered economic development. I am particularly interested in Italian and European economic history, with a focus on technological change, infrastructure, human capital, regional inequalities and gender. My current research examines the historical evolution of innovation and technology transfer, as well as the development and implementation of industrial policies in 19th and 20th-century Europe, including post-war reconstruction programmes.

A distinctive feature of my work is the creation of new large-scale historical datasets based on sources such as patents, genealogical records, infrastructure records and biographical information. I combine quantitative and qualitative approaches to investigate the long-term processes of economic change and institutional development.

My work has been published in journals such as the Economic History Review, Explorations in Economic History, Review of Income and Wealth, Business History, Cliometrica and Social Science History. Before joining the University of Pisa, I held research positions at Sant'Anna, working on PRIN projects concerning British industrialisation and Italian economic growth. I have also been a visiting researcher at the universities of Oxford and Lund. My PhD thesis investigated some of the causes and consequences of Italian regional divides. To this end, I used new genealogical data to measure human capital and social mobility in the run-up to the unification of 1861. I also examined the effect of access to railroad infrastructure on Italian innovation using new patent data. Finally, I examined the relationship between exposure to international ideas and domestic patent quality using biographical data. In addition to my work in modern economic history, I have an active research interest in the social and economic history of ancient Mediterranean societies, particularly the relationship between institutions and inequality.

Main Research interests

Technology transfer, innovation, and industrial policy; education and human capital; gender and inequality