Columbia University: Professor of Economics
Sala i Martin is one of the leading economists in the field of economic growth[and is consistently ranked among the most-cited economists in the world for works produced in the 1990s. His works include the topics of economic growth, development in Africa, monetary economics, social security, health and economics, convergence, and classical liberal thinking, with his book Liberal Economics for Non-Economists and Non-Liberals. The "liberal" in the title should be understood in the classic liberal/libertarian sense.
He has constructed an estimate of the world distribution of income, which he has then used to estimate poverty rates and measures of inequality. The conclusions of this study offered a new point of view for two reasons. Firstly, the United Nations and the World Bank used to believe that although poverty rates were falling, the total number of poor people was increasing. He claimed that both were falling. Secondly, the United Nations and the World Bank believe that individual income inequalities were on the rise. He claimed that they were not.
Sala i Martin is the author of the economic growth textbook Apuntes de Crecimiento Economico and the co-author (with Robert Barro) of the textbook Economic Growth.
Sala i Martin and Elsa V. Artadi are the authors of the Global Competitiveness Index, used since 2004 for the Global Competitiveness Report, an index published by the World Economic Forum that ranks 142 countries by their level of economic competitiveness.
He often collaborates with Catalan media to support the independence of Catalonia from Spain. In 2014 he had a public confrontation with Jose Manuel Durão Barroso, the president of the European Commission, reproaching him the lack of support towards a democratic resolution of the conflict between Spain and Catalonia.
