Vanessa Alviarez is a Lead Economist at the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. She received her B.A. in Economics from the Central University of Venezuela (Summa Cum Laude), and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on international economics, looking at how the location and sourcing decisions of multinationals affect employment, trade patterns, and firms’ performance. She also studies how a firm’s foreign network of suppliers and buyers can affect markups and prices.