FERNANDO
DEL RIO IGLESIAS

My research initially focused on the effects of technical change on productivity and employment and more recently on factor income distribution. In Boucekkine et al. (1999) we analyzed the existence of endogenous productivity cycles caused by the replacement of capital, while in del Rio (2002) and del Río and Sampayo (2014) the question of the relationship between technical progress, obsolescence and the productivity slowdown was addressed. In Boucekkine et al. (2003) we analyze the relationship between productivity growth caused by learning-by-doing if technical progress is embodied. The question of the influence of obsolescence and modernization of capital on economic growth was addressed in Boucekkine et al. (2005), while the question of the relationship between technical progress and capital depreciation is addressed in Boucekkine et al (2009). The influence of technical progress on job creation was analyzed in del Rio (2006) and del Rio (2010). In del Rio and Lores (2019), we show that the decline in the capital efficiency can account for the decrease of the labor share in the United States. In del Río and Rebelo (2025) we show through an econometric analysis that the decline in the labor income share in total income has been driven by technological bias in most OECD countries. My research also focused on the relationship between institutions and economic performance. In del Río and Lores (2016) we show that the distribution of economic and political power determines the regulatory policies of subnational governments, which is consistent with the high regulatory activity of Spanish regional governments. In del Rio ( 2019, 2021) I analyze the impact of institutions and rent-seeking on cross-country income differences. In particular, in del Rio (2019), I focus on the impact of property rights on predation and productivity and in del Rio (2021) I focus on the impact of rent-seeking on social infrastructure and productivity. In del Rio and Sampayo (2016), we analyze the impact of an economic regulation as the entry costs on productivity. Recently, my research interest was focused on growth and business cycle accounting. In del Rio and Lores (2021) we show that the productivity slowdowns in the United States have been mostly driven by the decline in capital decline while economic recoveries have been mostly driven by the improvement of the labor wedge. The work by del Rio and Lores (2023) show that financial frictions increasing the investment costs might have played a prominent role in accounting for the Great Recession in the United States. In del Río and Lores (2023), we perform a growth accounting exercise using the whole neoclassical growth model with the objective of understanding the Spanish economic growth between 1850 and 2019. In del Río and Lores (2025) we apply the general growth accounting technique to analyze the forces that have shaped the evolution of the world income distribution over the past seventy years. Currently, my research is focused two lines of research. On one hand, I am focusing in understanding the evolution of the functional distribution of income and, on the other hand, my work is focused in understanding the forces driving the world distribution of income.