I hold a degree in Economics, specialising in Economic Analysis and Quantitative Economics (Award for Best Academic Record), and a PhD in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Alicante (Distinction for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation). My main lines of research are (a) the delimitation and analysis of functional areas, with special emphasis on local labour markets, and (b) the study of the labour market using microdata.

My work on the first line began with two research stays as a visiting scholar at the Institute for Employment Research (University of Warwick). It has focused on adapting international methods to the Spanish case and developing a new set of regionalisation procedures based on optimisation approaches, applied both nationally and internationally. The results of this line of research have been published in, among others, Regional Studies, Journal of Transport Geography, Urban Geography, Papers in Regional Science, Geographical Analysis, Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy, and Spatial Economic Analysis (2018 Regional Studies Association Best Paper Award).

The second line focuses on labour market analysis, dealing with topics such as commuting, education and wages, overeducation, satisfaction, and wage inequality, often in the context of the tourism sector. The results of this work have been published in journals such as Regional Studies, Papers in Regional Science, Transportation, Social Indicators Research, Applied Economic Analysis, Tourism Management, Tourism Economics, Current Issues in Tourism, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, and Tourism Geographies.

Since 2003, I have served as principal investigator on seven projects funded under successive editions of the Spanish R&D&I Plan. I am currently co-PI of the project “Commuting and Functional Areas in the Valencian Community: New Theoretical and Methodological Challenges” (CIAICO/2024/031, Programme for the Promotion of R&D&I, Generalitat Valenciana, Consolidated Groups 2025–2028).

Regarding the transfer of research results to public administrations and innovation-oriented actions, I have been principal investigator on two projects funded by the Valencian Institute of Statistics (delimitation of NUTS 4 areas and functional areas for the LFS). I also coordinated (together with Professor Coombes, Newcastle University) a study funded by Eurostat, Study on Comparable Labour Market Areas (link), which informed new EU and OECD policy in this field. More recently, at the request of the Generalitat Valenciana, I co-led a report on indicators of multidimensional labour precarity at the local scale.

I am currently Director of the Institute of International Economics at the University of Alicante and of its Master’s Degree in International Trade. Previously, I served for ten years as Vice-Dean for International Relations at the Faculty of Economics and Business. I am a member of the academic committees of the Master’s Degree in Applied Economics and the PhD in Economics, and I am also an elected member of the University Senate. I have more than thirty years of teaching experience and recently received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Docentia-UA Programme.