Dante Contreras holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Chile and Director of the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES). Throughout his career, he has held several senior leadership and policy positions, including Executive Director at the World Bank, Vice President of the National Copper Corporation of Chile (CODELCO), officer at the United Nations Development Programme, and Director of the Department of Economics at the University of Chile.

He has also served as an advisor to a range of national and international institutions, including the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the Ministry of Labor, the National Women’s Service, the Ministry of Social Development, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

His research focuses on the economics of education, inequality, and social mobility, with particular emphasis on how institutions, policies, and large-scale shocks shape human capital accumulation over the life cycle. His recent work examines high-stakes educational decisions, gender gaps and child penalties in the labor market, teacher incentives, returns to higher education and student debt, and the effects of social unrest and social identity on economic outcomes. His research combines large-scale administrative data with quasi-experimental methods and has been published in leading international journals such as the Journal of Labor Economics, Labour Economics, Economics and Human Biology, Social Networks, Journal of Development Economics, Economic of education Review and World Development.