MEET OUR TEAM

Buscaglia was for five years chief Latin America economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York. In that role, he advised investment funds and major companies in the world on the economic and political developments in Latin America. Upon his arrival at the bank, re-structured the Latin America economics team and positioned it as number # 1 in the 2015 Institutional Investor magazine rankings (from # 8 in 2010, before his arrival to the bank). This ranking is based on the vote of 915 investors who have $691 billion of assets under management dedicated to Latin America. He also earned the # 1 position in Argentina (unranked before his arrival) and # 4 in Chile (unranked before his arrival) in the Institutional Investor magazine rankings. Buscaglia also served as chief economist for Latin America at Citibank in New York, and as chief economist for the Southern Cone countries at Citibank, based in Buenos Aires. He also worked at Goldman Sachs in New York, was a visiting professor at several universities in Latin America, and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Previously he was the Dean of Graduate Business Programs at the University of San Andrés, where he managed the launch of the Master of Business Administration (MBA). There he taught international finance, and strategy and competitiveness. Previously he was a professor of finance and economics at IAE Business School, Universidad Austral. Before beginning his doctoral studies he worked in the studio of Dr. Ricardo Arriazu in Buenos Aires. He has published numerous scholarly articles on macroeconomics and international economics and has presented at conferences of the World Bank, the Mexican Institute of Finance Executives, the Emerging Markets Traders Association (EMTA) and the Americas Society / Council of the Americas, among many others. He is coauthor of the book The integration of Argentina in the world, and has published articles and interviews in newspapers like the Financial Times, La Nación, Clarín, El Mercurio (Chile) and Economic Value (Brazil), among many others.

Patricio Navia is a political scientist who specializes on democratic consolidation, political parties, elections and public opinion in Latin America, and also on the relationship between democracy and economic development in contemporary Latin America. Navia spends part of the year in Santiago de Chile and part in New York. Navia holds a Ph.D. in Politics from New York University, an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Political Sciences and Sociology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a Master’s teacher in Liberal Studies and adjunct assistant professor in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University. He is also a full professor of political science at Universidad Diego Portales in Chile. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, New School University, Universidad de Salamanca, Universidad de Chile and NYU Buenos Aires, and a visiting fellow at the University of Miami. He has published scholarly articles and book chapters on democratization, electoral rules and democratic institutions in Latin America. As founding director of the Electoral Observatory at Universidad Diego Portales, he has co-edited Democracia Municipal (2012), El sismo electoral de 2009. Cambio y continuidad en las preferencias políticas de los chilenos (2010) and El genoma electoral chileno. Dibujando el mapa genético de las preferencias políticas en Chile (2009). His books Diccionario de la política chilena (with Alfredo Joignant and Francisco Javier Díaz), El díscolo. Conversaciones con Marco Enríquez-Ominami (2009), Que gane el más mejor: Mérito y Competencia en el Chile de hoy (with Eduardo Engel, 2006) and Las grandes alamedas: El Chile post Pinochet (2004) have been best sellers in Chile. He is a columnist in El Líbero in Chile, the Buenos Aires Herald, Perfil and Infolatam.co. He has previously penned columns for La Tercera, Capital and Poder magazines in Chile and regularly writes for the Infolatam website.

Jorge Morgenstern has 18 years of experience in macroeconomic analysis of Latin American economies. He was a Director at HSBC Global Research, responsible for South America ex-Brazil and for coordinating the Latin American Economics team. During his tenure at HSBC, he covered Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, and Peru. Earlier, he served as Chief Economist at the Argentina-based consulting firm ACM and taught Macroeconomics at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. He holds a BSc in Economics from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and a Postgraduate Degree in Economics from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, where he also worked as a Research Assistant.

Franco Nuñez holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics with Summa Cum Laude honors from Universidad de San Andrés (UdeSA), where he also pursued a Master’s degree in Economics. During his studies, he received the “Abanderados Argentinos” scholarship, and his thesis won the “Annual Economic Research Award Dr. Raúl Prebisch” from the Central Bank of Argentina (BCRA) in the undergraduate category. He previously worked in data analysis roles at KPMG, Unilever, and Nielsen. He is a lecturer in economics at UdeSA. Franco enjoys combining economic issues with data analysis in R and Python.

Solana Salazar is a fifth-year Economics student at the National University of Córdoba. She worked as an economic analyst at the Secretariat of Economy and Finance of the Municipality of Córdoba. She also participated in business consulting activities at the innovation lab “CÓRDOBA i” and served as a teaching assistant at the National University of Córdoba.