Patricio Valenzuela is an Associate Professor of Finance at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile. He is also a research fellow at the  Wharton Financial Institutions Center, University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Valenzuela received his PhD. from the European University Institute in 2012, and his B.S. degree in economics from the University of Chile in 2001. Prior to becoming a Ph.D. in economics, he worked in Washington D.C. at the research departments at the International Monetary Fund, Inter-American Development Bank, and World Bank.

He has participated in the organization of international conferences such as the Summer School on Economic Theory and Computational Methods at Universidad de los Andes (2022) and the Economic Theory Workshop 2018. He was a member of the organizing committee of the Workshop in Economic Theory (SWET) from 2015 to 2017.

Among his professional activities, he has served as a member of expert panels for the Chilean Budget Office and SERNAC. His research interests include Simultaneous Optimization, Mathematical Economics, Market Segmentation, and Social and Sustainable Finance. He has also acted as a reviewer for various academic journals and research projects, including Financial Innovation and FONDECYT – Chile.

Professor Valenzuela’s primary areas of research are corporate finance, financial economics, international finance, and development economics. He has empirically investigated the determinants of corporate credit risk and their impact on bond spreads and credit ratings, the costs and benefits of financial openness, the determinants of financial development and inclusion, the effects of natural disasters on financial markets, the effects of inequality on growth and credit, and the relationship between demographic factors and domestic savings rates.

Professor Valenzuela has published in several academic journals including the Review of Finance, Journal of Financial Stability, IMF Economic Review, British Journal of Management, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Banking and Finance, International Journal of Finance and Economics, Journal of Business Research, International Journal of Public Health, Economic Inquiry, Economics Letters, Finance Research Letters, Journal of Aging and Health, Journal of African Economies, and Review of Development Economics. He has also contributed chapters of several books on developing financial systems, including Research Handbook of Alternative Finance, Handbook of Microfinance, Financial Inclusion and Development, Oxford Handbook of Banking, Handbook of the Economics of Finance, Towards a Better Global Economy: Policy Implications for Citizens in the 21st Century, and African Successes: Modernization and Development.