Senior Visiting Scholar
Dr. Diego Aycinena is an economist with over 15 years of experience in diverse roles, including publishing peer-reviewed research, teaching, consulting, and providing strategic guidance in the boardroom. He has published over a dozen academic papers in peer-reviewed economics and social sciences journals, such as The Review of Economics and Statistics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, Experimental Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organizations, PLoS ONE, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Aycinena has played an important role in promoting behavioral and experimental economics in Latin America. He founded and directed one of the first Experimental Economics Laboratories in Latin America (Centro Vernon Smith de Economía Experimental in Guatemala) and co-directed the Rosario Experimental and Behavioral Economics Laboratory (REBEL). He established and led the premiere academic conference for experimental and behavioral economics in Latin America and co-organized it for a decade, as well as hosting and co-organizing, for the first time in Latin America, the regional meetings of the Economic Science Association.
In the past, Dr. Aycinena has provided practical and implementable advice to policymakers and regulators in different Latin American countries, including as an external adviser to Colombia’s National Planning Department’s (DNP) Public Policy Monitoring and Evaluation Direction (DSEPP), where he provided technical expertise on experimental and behavioral evaluations. He has also served as an external advisor to the board of directors of Guatemala’s electric power regulator (CNEE) where he provided advice on economic matters related to market monitoring, rulings, and compliance of the vertically separated electric power industry, including on the design of a procurement auction for six build, own, and operate (BOO) contracts for high-power transmission lines. In addition, he has served on the board of directors of the largest multilateral development funder for Latin America and the Caribbean—the Inter-American Development Bank, where he provided strategic guidance for effective development finance in the region.
Dr. Aycinena holds an MA and PhD in economics from George Mason University and a BA in business with a minor in finance from Universidad Francisco Marroquín. He is currently a senior visiting scholar at Penn’s Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences and an associate professor (on leave) in the Department of Economics at Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia.
