I am a Colombian economist residing in the United States. I hold a PhD in Economics and have over fifteen years of experience working with and learning from diverse teams and topics in both macroeconomics and microeconomics. I have developed a career as microeconomist studying mainly education and labor markets (I am particularly interested in study the connection between secondary school, higher education, and the enrollment in the labor market), and as macroeconomist working on trade, countries’ surveillance, and FX analysis (I am particularly interested in how REER affects productivity and trade).
My statistical background, visualizations, coding skills, and extensive experience in household surveys and administrative data have been used in both aspects of my career. For instance, in Colombia, my native country, I was part of the team that created and managed one of the world’s largest educational information data systems: SPADIES.
Currently, I work as a senior country specialist for the CAN region at the Inter-American Development Bank. I am a former senior research analyst for the European Department and Western Hemisphere at the International Monetary Fund, and a data scientist at the World Bank. At the IMF, I created sophisticated tools to collect administrative data for my teams, enabling them to improve their analysis and surveillance work on Financial Soundness Indicators, trade, and COVID-19. At the World Bank, I developed the codes and database for the GovData360 portal and collaborated on the development of the user interface and data visualization tools for the portal. I am also continuing my independent research on topics including teacher performance, higher education outcomes, educational gap, student loans, labor market, industry productivity, and trade.
I would also like to stress that I love to teach. I am a former Professor of Introduction to Economics, International Economics, Macroeconomics, Statistics, Quantitative Methods, and Game Theory at Universidad de la Salle (Associate Professor), Universidad de los Andes (Lecturer), and Universidad de la Sabana (Lecturer).
Follow me on X (Former Twitter) @luomar , visit my ResearchGate , my Youtube, my Spotify, or check my GitHub !
If you like chess, let’s play! My username in chess.com is luisoherrera
Luis Omar Herrera-Prada 