Associate Professor Beatriz Armendáriz

Biography | Most Relevant Research Activity | Awards | Books | Publications

Biography

Beatriz Armendáriz is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics, University College London. Prior to that, she was a Lecturer in Economics at Harvard, and an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is also affiliated to the Centre for European Research in Microfinance (CERMi). Her dissertation on international finance was entirely written at MIT, but she received her PhD in Economics at The School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris.

Most Relevant Research Activity 

Beatriz’s research field was initially on international finance. From her 1990 PhD dissertation, she published her first article on international in the Journal of International Economics, "International debt: An explanation of the commercial banks lending behavior after 1982". 

Shortly after, and thanks to her then student, Lamiya Morshed, Beatriz discovered that international finance and microcredit contracts had a common feature, namely, that both contracts were often agreed by lenders and borrowers without explicit collateral. Her research since has focused on microfinance. Beatriz’s first paper on microfinance was published in the Journal of Development Economics, "On the design of a credit agreement with peer monitoring". 

This was followed by a series of contributions to the field of microfinance, most notably, her article co-written with Christian Gollier, which appeared  in The Economic Journal, "Peer Group Formation in an Adverse Selection Model" and an article co-written with Jonathan Morduch in the Journal of Economics of Transition, "Microfinance Beyond Group Lending".

Beatriz’s research with Jonathan Morduch continued. Their book titled The Economics of Microfinance was first published by MIT Press in 2005, just a year before Muhammad Yunus, the founder of microcredit in Bangladesh, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “creating economic and social development from below”. The Armendáriz – Morduch book was revised, and the second edition of it was published again by MIT Press in 2010.

Armendáriz also co-edited The Handbook of Microfinance with Marc Labie for Word Scientific, and, more recently, she co-authored yet another book for MIT Press in 2017, The Economics of Contemporary Latin American Economy. This book has made Beatriz to reflect on her earlier work on international finance and learn about latest-state-of-the -art topics which are relevant to Latin America and most of the developing world.

Awards

• Savings Banks Academic History Award (2nd Prize) – joint with Aaron Graham. World Savings and Retail Banking Institute. Brussels, Belgium. 2019
• Brains Back in Brussels. Academic Award & Research Grant. Solvay Brussels School in Economics and Management, Brussels, Belgium. 2009.
• Fighting Poverty. Academic Award in Philosophy and Poverty. Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico. 2007.
• Raúl Bailleres Academic Achievement Award for Academic Achievement. Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de Mexico (ITAM), Mexico, D.F., Mexico. 2006.
   

Books

 

The Economics of Contemporary Latin American Economy (with Felipe Larraín B.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2017

 

The Handbook of Microfinance (with Marc Labie) Singapore- London: Scientific Word Publishing. 2011
 

 

The Economics of Microfinance, 2nd Edition (with Jonathan Morduch), 2010, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2010. (Translated into Spanish and Chinese)