Political Economy of Climate Idea Lab

Maria Victoria Murillo (Ph.D., Harvard, 1997) holds a joint appointment with the Department of Political Science and the School of International and Public Affairs and is currently the Director of the Institute for Latin American Studies (ILAS).

Murillo is the author of Labor Unions, Partisan Coalitions, and Market Reforms in Latin America, which was translated as Sindicatos, Coaliciones Partidarias y Reformas de Mercado en América Latina by Siglo XXI Editores and Political Competition, Partisanship, and Policymaking in the Reform of Latin American Public Utilities. She is also the co-author of Non-Policy Politics: Richer Voters, Poorer Voters, and the Diversification of Electoral Strategies with Ernesto Calvo (Cambridge University Press 2019) and Understanding Institutional Weakness: Power and Design in Latin American Institutions (Cambridge University Press, Element in Latin American Politics and Society Series, 2019) with Daniel Brinks and Steven Levitsky. She is also the co-editor of Understanding Weak Institutions: Lessons from Latin America ( Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2020), Argentine Democracy: The Politics of Institutional Weakness (Penn State University Press 2005), Carreras Magisteriales, Desempeño Educativo y Sindicatos de Maestros en América Latina (Flacso, 2003), and Discutir Alfonsín (Siglo XXI, 2010). Her work has also appeared in International Organization, World Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, World Development, the Annual Review of Political Science, and many Latin American academic journals.

Murillo's research on distributive politics in Latin America has covered labor politics and labor regulations, public utility reform, education reform, agricultural policies, and economic policy more generally. Her more recent work focuses on electoral behavior, contentious dynamics, and the analysis of institutional weakness. Her empirical work is based on a variety of methods ranging from quantitative analysis of datasets built for all Latin American countries to qualitative field work in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela and survey and experiments in Argentina and Chile.

Murillo received her B.A. from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Murillo has taught at Yale University, was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University (Harvard Academy for Area Studies & David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies), and at the Russell Sage Foundation, as well as a Fulbright fellow.

Geoffrey Heal, Donald C. Waite III Professor Emeritus of Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School, is noted for contributions to economic theory and resource and environmental economics. He holds bachelors (first class), masters and doctoral degrees from Cambridge University, where he studied at Churchill College and taught at Christ’s College. He has also taught at Sussex, Essex, Yale, Stanford, École Polytechnique, Stockholm and Princeton. He holds an Honorary Doctorate from the Universite´ de Paris Dauphine.

Author of eighteen books and about two hundred articles, Professor Heal is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, past Managing Editor of the Review of Economic Studies, Past President of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, recipient of its prize for publications of enduring quality and a Life Fellow, recipient of the 2013 Best Publication Prize of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, a Director of the Union of Concerned Scientists and a founder and Director and chairman of the Board of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, developers of the REDD policy for reducing deforestation by awarding carbon credits for forest conservation. Recent books include Nature and the Marketplace, Valuing the Future, When Principles Pay and Whole Earth Economics (forthcoming).

Professor Heal chaired a committee of the National Academy of Sciences on valuing ecosystem services, was a Commissioner of the Pew Oceans Commission, was a coordinating lead author of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, was a member of President Sarkozy’s Commission on the Meaurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, was a member of the advisory board for the World Bank’s 2010 World Development Report and the United Nations Environment Program’s 2011 Human Development Report, and acts as an advisor to the World Bank on its Green Growth project. He is also a Director of Public Business, a foundation that promotes in-depth public interest journalism and a member of the Advisory Board of Green Seal.

He has been a principal in two start-up companies, a consulting firm and a software and telecommunications company, and until recently was a member of the Investment Committee of a green private equity group. He teaches MBA courses on “Current Developments in Energy Markets,” “Business and Society: Doing Well by Doing Good?” and “The Business of Sustainability,” teaches a doctoral course on advanced microeconomic theory, and advises doctoral students interested in sustainability.