Pol Antràs

Early life and education A Spanish citizen, Antràs grew up in Barcelona and attended the Aula Escola Europea from 1978 until 1993. As a schoolboy, he spent a year in New Mexico as an exchange student at the Albuquerque Academy. He studied economics at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, receiving a BA in 1998 and an MSc in 1999, both with highest honours.

More recently, his research has focused on understanding the emergence of global value chains. His work has specifically emphasized the sequential nature of certain production processes, and the implications of this sequentiality for the global sourcing decisions of firms, and for the implications of trade wars. Together with Davin Chor, he developed an influential model of global value chains, while also developing a widely used measure of the position (or upstreamness) of industries in global value chains. This work was the basis of his 2018 Ohlin Lecture at the Stockholm School of Economics.