Marco Martinez

Welcome! 

I am an Assistant Professor (Ricercatore Tenure-Track) in 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. 

My main areas of expertise are the economic history of innovation and of industrial policies, such as those related to early infrastructure development and post-World War II recovery aid. I am particularly interested in the Italian economic history, with an emphasis on gender issues, on the evolution of inventive activity, and on human capital. My research relies on both quantitative and qualitative approaches, and it has been published in journals such as the Economic History Review, Review of Income and Wealth, Business History, and Cliometrica, among others. For more details on my projects, please see the Research page.

My Ph.D. thesis, supervised by Alessandro Nuvolari, investigated some of the causes and consequences of Italian regional divides. To this end, I used new genealogical data to measure the human capital and social mobility in the run-up to the Unification of 1861. I also used new patent data to examine  the effect of access to the railroad infrastructure on Italian innovation. Finally, I used biographical data to examine the relationship between exposure to international ideas and domestic patent quality. Previously, I have held post-doctoral positions as part of the PRIN project "Industrialization in France and Britain: a new comparative economic history (1700-1913)", and contributes to a comparative history of one of the main drivers of industrialization in Britain and its delayed development in France and the rest of Europe: human capital accumulation (literacy); and of the PRIN project "Lost highway: skills, technology and trade in Italian economic growth, 1815-2018". Finally, I am interested in the social and economic history of ancient Mediterranean societies and their interaction with inequalities and institutional change. 

Main Research interests

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