Julio Galvez | IE School of Global and Public Affairs

Julio Galvez

About me

My name is Julio Galvez, and I currently work as a Research Economist in the Macro-financial Analysis and Monetary Policy Department of the DG Economics, Statistics and Research, Banco de España. I'm from the Philippines, but my educational journey has taken me to the capital of Europe, Madrid, where I earned my PhD in Economics. I'm particularly interested in Financial Economics and Applied Econometrics. To me, economics is much more than a field of study; it’s an avenue to do good.

Julio Galvez

“Economics provides students with a unique perspective on understanding events, wherein they can explain rigorously, using quantitative methods, the cause and effect of different policies.”

Julio Galvez

Economics for the greater good

For Julio Galvez, learning economics provides a unique perspective to appreciate events both objectively and subjectively, by using quantitative methods to explore the cause and effect of different economic policies.

That’s why he sees the Master in Applied Economics as such a relevant program: it equips students with a broad toolkit to understand the economic phenomena which impact society positively. He says the program strikes the right balance between theoretical models and practical applications, opening doors to a variety of opportunities in the labor market.

He’s certainly as well-placed as anyone to offer such insight. After completing his undergraduate studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman, Julio worked as a research assistant for a professor who was evaluating a policy intervention related to improving maternal health. With this, he saw firsthand how economics could be applied to improve lives, and from then, he made a conscious decision to explore the different dimensions of economics thoroughly.

After that experience, he went on to complete a PhD at the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies (CEMFI), which put him on the path to professional excellence, and he asserts that his studies allowed him to master the tools needed to make sense of financial data. He has also learned programming and data analytics skills, allowing him to analyze and shed light on how critical economic decisions are made.

And such expertise has proved valuable; in his work as a research economist at the Bank of Spain, he spends his days monitoring the financial markets and trying to understand the drivers of asset prices. This gives him an outlet to use his unique grasp of economics in transformative and challenging ways.

Julio also delves into research, where his interests, though broad, mostly relate to how households make financial decisions. He has produced a number of papers, winning plaudits for them from the start: his “Household portfolio choices and nonlinear income risk” won the Best PhD Student Paper award at the 2017 CEPR European Conference on Household Finance, as well as the Carlo Giannini Prize for Best Paper in Macroeconomics and Financial Econometrics at the 8th ICEEE. As a global thought leader in the sector, he’s also a regular contributor to policy-oriented research documents.

Aside from working, when Julio finds time to sit back and relax, he keeps himself busy by reading. He recommends Anne Case and Angus Deaton’s “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism” He also recommends HBO’s “Succession,” pointing out that while it’s not a show about economics specifically, its characters’ actions can be explained through economic theories. Julio clearly always has his mind on his field, and he’s finding new economic perspectives in the most unlikely places.

“Economics provides students with a unique perspective on understanding events, wherein they can explain rigorously, using quantitative methods, the cause and effect of different policies.”

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