Manuela Puente Beccar

Manuela Puente Beccar is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, Germany. Her research focuses on health economics, development economics, and urban economics, with a particular emphasis on health behaviors, youth empowerment programs, and the application of structural models and field experiments.

• Education:
  • Ph.D. in Economics (2017–2022), Bocconi University, Italy
  • M.Sc. in Econometrics (2013–2014), University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • B.Sc. in Economics (2009–2012), Universidad Privada Boliviana, Bolivia

Manuela employs a diverse methodological toolkit, including reduced-form analysis, structural modeling, and experimental methods, to address research questions in health and development economics. Her recent work has explored the impact of youth empowerment programs on gender-based violence during the COVID-19 pandemic and spatial patterns in economic preference formation using field experiments.

Her publications demonstrate interdisciplinary engagement with areas such as behavioral economics, econometrics, and social policy, often tackling issues related to youth development, labor market interventions, and health behaviors in low-income settings. She is affiliated with the Experimental Economics Group at the Max Planck Institute, collaborating with researchers like Matthias Sutter and others on projects spanning multiple continents.