Professor Jesus Crespo Cuaresma: “The current COVID-19 crisis has made it evident how important rationality and scientific progress are to construct a better world for everyone”
Hoping is for free, so I will go for a world free of superstition and irrationality, guided by critical thinking and the scientific method. It’s due time! The current COVID-19 crisis has probably made it even more evident how important rationality and scientific progress are to construct a better world for everyone.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Jesus Crespo Cuaresma a Professor of Economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. He has published numerous articles in renowned scientific journals and acts as a scientific consultant to the World Bank and the Austrian Institute of Economic Research.
Thanks for joining us Professor Cuaresma! Could you give us an overview of your career?
I was born in Seville (Spain) and studied economics as an undergraduate there. Then, I moved to Vienna, where I took graduate courses at the Institute for Advanced Studies and obtained my PhD at the University of Vienna. In 2007, I got a full professorship at the University of Innsbruck, where I worked until 2010. Since 2010 I am a professor of economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. I teach and research on topics related to econometrics and macroeconomics. In my research, I am interested in using statistical methods to shed light on issues such as why some countries are richer than others or how economic growth affects the environment. My research is quantitative and the topics I deal with very often require interdisciplinary cooperation, so I tend to work not only with economists, but also with statisticians, mathematicians, demographers, geographers and sociologists.
Why did you choose this career path?
When I was a small kid, I wanted to become a teacher. My interest in mathematics and philosophy made me choose economics (which I see as a combination of these two fields) at university and in the end, I decided to become a “teacher for big kids” at university. My interest for research came later, when I was confronted with the scientific frontier in economics during my graduate studies.
What are three of your proudest moments in your career?
Most of the moments that fill me with pride involve seeing that my students are better than I was when I was their age, and realizing that I may have played a role in that development.
You’ve researched some fascinating yet broad topics, from poverty in North Korea to deforestation. How do you choose your research and the methods you use to study?
My experience is that coming up with a research idea is a relatively unpredictable process. Some of my research questions were born out of hanging out in bars with colleagues and friends from other disciplines, in other cases the inspiration arrives while having a shower, and sometimes in the middle of a faculty meeting. Although attending scientific conferences, seminars and workshops does contribute very significantly to being exposed to interesting research results and may inspire new questions, my personal experience is that informal interactions play also a central role in developing research agendas and new methods.
Could you tell us more about your research into deforestation?
This is actually an example of the type of research that is born out of mingling with friends and colleagues from other disciplines. In this piece of work, we quantified forest cover around all national borders of the world using remote-sensed satellite data and put the differences in deforestation across countries in relationship with their relative income per capita level. What we did amounts to using national borders as a natural experiment to assess the role that economic development plays as a determinant of forest loss worldwide. Our results confirmed that as poor countries become richer, deforestation tends to take place, but that that there is no systematic empirical evidence of such a phenomenon taking place for richer economies.
Why is this research important?
Understanding the drivers of deforestation at the global level is a central element of the academic and policy discussion about the present and future consequences of climate change. Forests can contribute to the mitigation of climate change by capturing carbon, so predicting future dynamics in deforestation is very important for the design of global climate policy. The research design we had in our study allowed us to interpret our results as causal effects of income growth on forest cover loss, and the quantitative measurement of this linkage can therefore be used for prediction and projection exercises about the future of forest cover worldwide.
If you could tell your younger self one thing, what would that be?
I would rather leave my younger self alone and let him make his own mistakes.
What advice would you give to others who wish to go into academic research?
I take it that somebody that wishes to go into academic research has already recognized the trade-offs and costs that come with it concerning the fact that they are entering a sector which is extremely competitive and requires an enormous amount of flexibility, notably in terms of geographical mobility. If that is the case, I would encourage them to enjoy and make use of the freedom that comes with it, and to talk to colleagues from other disciplines. Sometimes in order to push the research frontier forward in your particular topic you need to listen to people that work on expanding a different research frontier. The same way as international trade improves welfare, trade of ideas improves discovery.
What do you plan to study next and why?
I am currently embarked in a couple of projects related to the use of new methodological tools aimed at understanding the future of global migration worldwide, as well as the interaction between environmental change, human conflict and population flows across countries. I expect this research project to provide sound empirical results that can inform evidence-based policy making in the design of efficient responses to the challenges posed by climate change as a determinant of human migration at the global level.
What are your hopes for the future?
Hoping is for free, so I will go for a world free of superstition and irrationality, guided by critical thinking and the scientific method. It’s due time! The current COVID-19 crisis has probably made it even more evident how important rationality and scientific progress are to construct a better world for everyone.
Thank you! We wish you continued success
