Beatriz Armendariz

Beatriz Armendáriz is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics, University College London. Prior to that, she was a Lecturer in Economics at Harvard and an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is also affiliated with the Centre for European Research in Microfinance (CERMi). Her dissertation on international finance was entirely written at MIT, but she received her Ph.D. in Economics at The School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris.

Beatriz’s research field was initially on international finance. From her 1990 Ph.D. dissertation, she published her first article on international in the Journal of International Economics, "International debt: An explanation of the commercial banks' lending behavior after 1982". 

Shortly after, and thanks to her then-student, Lamiya Morshed, Beatriz discovered that international finance and microcredit contracts had a common feature, namely, that lenders and borrowers often agreed upon both contracts without explicit collateral. Her research since has focused on microfinance. Beatriz’s first paper on microfinance was published in the Journal of Development Economics, "On the design of a credit agreement with peer monitoring." 

This was followed by a series of contributions to the field of microfinance, most notably, her article co-written with Christian Gollier, which appeared in The Economic Journal, "Peer Group Formation in an Adverse Selection Model" and an article co-written with Jonathan Morduch in the Journal of Economics of Transition, "Microfinance Beyond Group Lending."

Beatriz’s research with Jonathan Morduch continued. Their book titled The Economics of Microfinance was first published by MIT Press in 2005, just a year before Muhammad Yunus, the founder of microcredit in Bangladesh, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “creating economic and social development from below.” The Armendáriz – Morduch book was revised, and the second edition of it was published again by MIT Press in 2010.

Armendáriz also co-edited The Handbook of Microfinance with Marc Labie for Word Scientific, and, more recently, she co-authored yet another book for MIT Press in 2017, The Economics of Contemporary Latin American Economy. This book has made Beatriz reflect on her earlier work on international finance and learn about latest-state-of-the -art topics which are relevant to Latin America and most of the developing world.