Barbara Petrongolo is Professor of Economics at Queen Mary University, Research Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance (London School of Economics), and Director of the Labour Economics Programme of CEPR. She has previously help positions at the London School of Economics, the Paris School of Economics and the University of Carlos III (Madrid). Her main area of interest is applied labour economics. The focus of some of her recent work is the performance of labour markets with job search frictions, with applications to unemployment dynamics, welfare policy and interdependencies across local labour markets. She has also carried out research on the causes and characteristics of gender inequalities in wages and employment rates, in a historical perspective and across countries, with emphasis on the role of employment selection mechanisms, structural transformation, and interactions within the household.

She joined IZA as a Research Fellow in October 2002.