Francisco is a Senior Economist at in the World Bank Group’s Education Global Practice. He specializes in applied microeconomics, with a focus on education and labor markets. He has studied diverse topics, such as the long-term effects of early childhood programs and educational reforms, the equity challenges in higher education, and unintended effects of poverty alleviation programs. More recently, he has specialized in the design, implementation, and evaluation of scalable dropout prevention strategies. Before joining the Education GP, he worked for the World Bank at the Poverty Reduction and Equity Unit (PREM) and the Human Development Sector Unit in Europe and Central Asia; and for the Inter-American Development Bank. He also worked as researcher at the Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS) at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), Argentina. Francisco holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).