Rodrigo R. Soares is Lemann Foundation Professor of Economics at Insper, Brazil. His research centers on development economics, ranging from health and demographic economics to crime and labor. His work has appeared in various scientific journals, including American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of the European Economic Association, and American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, among various others. Before joining Insper, he taught at Columbia University, the Sao Paulo School of Economics-FGV, PUC-Rio, and the University of Maryland. At Insper, Rodrigo was also Dean of Research (2022-2023) and Vice-president of Academic Affairs (2023-2025).

Rodrigo is an Elected Fellow of the Econometric Society and an Honorary Member of LACEA. In 2006, he was awarded the Kenneth J. Arrow Award from the International Health Economics Association for the best paper published in the field of Health Economics. He was also awarded four times the research prize from the Brazilian Economic Association (ANPEC), thrice for the best paper (2006, 2009 and 2022) and once for the best PhD dissertation (2002). Rodrigo is research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA, Germany), research affiliate at J-PAL Latin America, and associate editor of the Journal of Human Capital, of the Journal of Demographic Economics, and of the IZA Journal of Development & Migration. He received his PhD in Economics at the University of Chicago in 2002.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in January 2007.