Julian Martinez-Correa
I am a third-year PhD student at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.
My research lies at the intersection of economics of education, labor and development economics. More broadly, I study how social forces and institutions shape educational investment and labor market opportunities.
Before UChicago, I worked at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). I hold an M.A. in Economics from Universidad Nacional de La Plata and a B.A. in Economics from Universidad de Buenos Aires, both in Argentina.
You can reach me at jmartinezcorrea@uchicago.edu.
Publications
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Family Rules: Nepotism in the Mexican Judiciary
Abstract
We examine how hiring autonomy can enable favoritism within public institutions, focusing on Mexico’s federal judiciary. Using personnel records and an event study of judge arrivals, with shared surnames serving as a proxy for family relationships, we document likely nepotistic appointments. Within a year, a judge’s arrival is followed by an estimated 0.05 related hires into key positions, a figure that is likely a lower bound. Connected appointees tend to have lower educational attainment, and their arrival is associated with reduced court productivity. Nepotism is concentrated among judges with prior administrative sanctions and those assigned to their birth states.
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From displacement to integration: mitigating the distributional effect of immigration through an amnesty program
Abstract
We study how large-scale Venezuelan migration and an integration-oriented amnesty affected income distribution in Colombia. Recentered influence-function regressions within an instrumental-variables design show that the migration shock harmed the lower end of native Colombians’ income distribution, while regularization partially offset that effect. The evidence points to occupational downgrading as the central mechanism: employment restrictions pushed qualified Venezuelan migrants into lower-paid, more routine-intensive work, and the amnesty reduced that mismatch.
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Improving early literacy through teacher professional development: Experimental evidence from Colombia
Abstract
We evaluate Let’s All Learn to Read, a one-year professional development program for first-grade teachers in Colombia that combined training and coaching throughout the school year with structured materials for teachers and students. A school-level randomized trial found that, after one year, literacy scores in treated schools were approximately 0.39 standard deviations higher than in control schools. The gains persisted through second and third grade, even though later-grade teachers had not received the program.
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Latin American Brotherhood? Immigration and Preferences for Redistribution
Abstract
We examine how immigration shapes support for redistribution when immigrants and natives come from relatively similar Latin American backgrounds. We combine province-level public-opinion responses with several immigration datasets and use three complementary empirical strategies: census-based cross-sectional instrumental variables, fixed-effects estimates using harmonized household surveys, and an instrumental-variables analysis of Venezuelan migration to Colombia. Across these approaches, higher local immigrant shares are associated with significantly lower, but non-monotonic, support for redistribution, particularly when immigrants are from other Latin American countries or are low-skilled. The relationship is stronger among higher-income respondents.
Work in Progress
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Human and Political Capital