Dr. Simone Sasso


Affiliated researcher

Research group(s):
1. Economics of Knowledge and Innovation
4. Governance and institutions
6. Migration and Development

Simone Sasso is an economist at the Inter-American Development Bank (Competitiveness, Technology and Innovation Division) in Washington DC, USA. He holds a PhD in Economics and Policy Studies of Technical Change from UNU-MERIT and Maastricht University, a Master of Science in Local Economic Development from the London School of Economics, a Master of Science in Economics and Business from the University of Turin, and a Bachelor of Science in Business and Economics from the same institution. His research interests focus on innovation, human capital, (higher) education, and regional development. His doctoral thesis, supervised by Prof. Bart Verspagen and Prof. Jo Ritzen, investigated the impact of university graduates’ mobility on firm productivity, education-job matching, and scientific collaborations.

Simone has several years of professional experience working as a researcher and consultant on innovation, (higher) education, and regional development issues. He worked for more than 3 years at the ILO where he was involved in the design and delivery of training courses for policymakers as well as on an impact assessment of a local economic development project in Nepal. While developing his PhD thesis, Simone worked at the European Commission (Directorate of Industrial Innovation) focusing on human capital mobility and innovation. From 2013 to 2015 he worked for the foundation Empower European Universities where he analysed European higher education policies and their relationship with university performances and economic growth.  For the UNIDO Industrial Development Report 2016, he investigated the role of FDI and technology spillovers in low and middle-income countries. More recently, Simone worked as a researcher for IZA on human capital, skills, and productivity.




Selected publications by Simone Sasso


UNU-MERIT