Eliana La Ferrara is the Invernizzi Chair in Development Economics at Bocconi University, Milan. She is president of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) and past president of the European Economic Association. She directs the Laboratory for Effective Anti-poverty Policies (LEAP) at Bocconi. She is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of CEPR, EUDN and IGIER, a J-PAL Affiliate and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her research fields are Development Economics and Political Economics. Her research focuses on the role of scial factors in economic development. She has studied ethnic diversity, kin structure and social norms, and the effects of television on social outcomes. She has also investigated political constraints to development, with particular focus on violent conflict in Africa. Her work has been published in the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Development Economics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and the Journal of the European Economic Association. She received a PhD in Economics from Harvard University.
