I was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1956, from Portuguese immigrants father's side and Armenian immigrants mother's side.

After completing High School, I moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1975 as the dictatorship instaured in Uruguay in 1973 started prosecution of student activists. I lived in Buenos Aires until 1979 when I moved to Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain, where I started my undergraduate studies in Economics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona from 1979 until 1984.

When I finished college I pursued graduate studies and I worked as a teaching assistant at the Department of Economic Theory of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. In 1986 I won a "La Caixa" scholarship for graduate studies in the United States. From 1986 until 1991 I worked in my Ph.D. at the Department of Economics of Stanford University under the supervision of Prof. Tim Bresnahan.

I am an applied economist, my main fields of research are Applied Industrial Economics, especially innovation related issues, and Labor Economics. Recently I got interest also in the Economics of Education, for instance in the performance of educational systems.