Santiago Budría is a microeconometrician mostly interested in labour, education and behavioural economics. Most part of his research output to date has gravitated around fundamental questions related to economic inequality and productivity performance and has been published in international peer reviewed journals, including Economics and Human Biology, Journal of Happiness Studies, Review of Income and Wealth, Journal of Economic Psychology, Empirical Economics, Applied Economics, Social Indicators Research, Spanish Economic Review and Economics of Education Review. At the present time he is pursuing work investigating the role of personality traits, economic status, social capital and material deprivation in determining well-being levels in modern societies.

Santiago Budría is currently involved and has participated in several research networks and long-duration projects financed by the European Commission (HPSE-CT-2002-00108), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ECO2008-04321/ECON) and the Regional Government of Andalucía (P07.SEJ.03261 and P07.SEJ.0487).

Santiago Budría holds a Bachelors degree in Economics from University Pompeu Fabra (1996) and a PhD in Quantitative Economics from University of Alicante (2003). He is one of the scientific coordinators of CEEAplA, a well-rated research centre financed by the Portuguese FCT.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in March 2012.