Salvador Barberà

Salvador Barberà is Emeritus Professor of Economics at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a BSE Emeritus Research Professor. He earned a PhD in Economics from Northwestern University (1975). He chaired the Department of Economics and Economic History and was the first director of the IDEA doctoral program at UAB.

He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the Spanish Economic Association, the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory and the Game Theory Society, and elected member of the Academia Europaea. He received the Rey Juan Carlos Award in Economics, XVIII Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca i la Innovació Prize (FCRI), the Rey Jaime I Award, the Spanish National “Pascual Madoz” Research Prize, and the Narcís Monturiol Medal, awarded by Generalitat de Catalunya. He is also Doctor Honoris Causa of the Universidad Pablo de Olavide.

As a researcher, Barberà has concentrated in the fields of public economics, incentives, utility, and game theory. More specifically, he is an expert in social choice theory, the design of strategy-proof mechanisms, and the analysis of voting procedures. He has co-edited a two-volume Handbook of Utility Theory, and his publications have appeared in Econometrica, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Theory, Games and Economic Behavior and Social Choice and Welfare, among others. He has also served as director of the Spanish Economic Review and on the boards of other journals, such as Econometrica, American Economic Review, Games and Economic Behavior, Mathematical Social Sciences and Journal of Public Economic Theory.

Professor Barberà is past-President of the Social Choice and Welfare Society and of the Association of the Southern European Economic Theorists (ASSET). He has been elected to the Council of different learned societies, including the Econometric Society, the Social Choice and Welfare Society and the Society for the Advancement of Game Theory and Game Theory Society. 

He served as General Secretary of Research and Technological Policies in the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (2004-2006). Prior to that, between 2000 and 2004, he was the first director of the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), a foundation created by the Catalan Government in order to consolidate in Catalonia a group of high-level scientists of all origins. He has also served on the board of the BSE, as Vice-Chairman and Secretary, in different periods.