Laura Páez Heredia

Doctor Laura Páez, a native of Venezuela, is an international development practitioner with more than twenty years of professional experience. She is currently appointed to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), where she heads the Market Institutions Section and prior to that headed the Investment Policy Section. Her current work focuses on generating knowledge on the regulatory and policy dimensions across investment, competition, intellectual property, services and digitalization in Africa, geared to support regional integration processes such as the African Continental Free Trade Area. Prior to her current appointment at ECA, Ms. Páez worked at the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development in Geneva on issues pertaining to Africa’s economic development in the context of UNCTAD’s trade and development agenda.

Ms. Páez has conducted extensive technical work and academic research on the regulatory impact of financial services liberalization, regionalism, foreign direct investment and trade liberalization, trade preference agreements and aid for trade in Africa and the Americas. She is author of several peer reviewed papers and a book and regularly participates in conferences and seminars around the world. She has also lectured courses on international economics and trade negotiations issues for trade policy officials as well as university master level students. Among other academic accreditations, Ms. Páez holds a master’s degree in international law and Economics from the World Trade institute of the University of Berne and a Doctorate degree in Economics from the University of Zurich. She holds a MSc. In International Economics and a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the Alma Mater of her country, the Universidad Central de Venezuela.