Biography

Gustavo Castro is an economist and Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of São Paulo and a member of the Regional and Urban Economics Lab (NEREUS). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of São Paulo (FEA-USP) and an MBA in Finance and Controllership from USP.

His research focuses on regional and urban economics, public policy evaluation, and spatial econometrics. He studies how urbanization patterns, human capital, skills, demographic dynamics, and infrastructure investments shape productivity, labor markets, and regional economic performance, with a particular emphasis on emerging economies and Brazil.

Methodologically, his work combines applied econometrics, spatial data analysis, and causal inference techniques, including difference-in-differences, instrumental variables, time-series methods, and machine learning. His empirical analyses rely on large-scale administrative and geospatial datasets.

In addition to academic research, he has experience working with public and private stakeholders on economic and financial modeling for public-private partnerships (PPPs), including the evaluation of economic impacts and the design of strategies for economic and financial rebalancing.

He is a member of the Brazilian Econometric Society (SBE), the Regional Science Association International (RSAI), and the Brazilian Regional Science Association (ABER), and serves as a referee for academic journals, including Regional Science Policy & Practice, Estudos Econômicos, and the Revista Brasileira de Estudos Regionais e Urbanos.