Juan E. Saavedra

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Juan E. Saavedra

Juan E. Saavedra

Professor of Economics, University of Southern California’s Center for Economics
Person Description

Juan E. Saavedra is an Economist at the University of Southern California’s Center for Economics and Social Research and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Saavedra’s work spans various domains of education policy analysis. He has published on topics that include school vouchers, conditional cash transfers for education, the impacts of resources on educational attainment, collegiate value-added, teacher labor markets, vocational education, national reviews of educational policy and educational cost-effectiveness analysis. As a principal or co-principal investigator, he has led projects in Mexico, Peru and Colombia sponsored by the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the MIT Jameel Poverty Action Lab, among others. In 2014 Dr. Saavedra published a book that became the education sector’s reform platform of Colombia’s outgoing president and the blueprint for a recent reform of national teacher evaluation policy.  Dr. Saavedra is currently PI of a large-scale RCT helping high school seniors overcome informational and behavioral obstacles in their transition to college. In 2015, Dr. Saavedra and his co-authors were awarded the Juan Luis Londoño Prize for the best paper presented at the Latin-American Economic Association Annual Conference, for work examining the long-term benefits and costs of a large-scale private school scholarship program in Colombia.  Dr. Saavedra currently serves as Expert Advisor to the OECD’s Directorate for Education and Skills.