Leonardo Gasparini is founder and director of the Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS) at Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP) in Argentina, a research institution devoted to the study of development and social issues in Latin America. Gasparini has a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Income Distribution and Labor Economics at UNLP. He is also visiting professor at Universidad de San Andrés and researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Argentina (CONICET). He has also been a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia and the Freie University, Berlin.

Gasparini has published articles on income distribution, poverty, social policy, informality and other labor issues in several international journals such as the Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Review of Income and Wealth, Social Choice and Welfare, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Journal of Economic Inequality, Journal of Income Distribution, and others. He has written several books on development issues including a textbook on poverty and inequality in Latin America. He has taught courses and given seminars on distributive issues in almost all Latin American countries. Gasparini has been awarded with the Guggenheim fellowship 2009.