Laura Alfaro is the Warren Alpert Professor of Business Administration. Professor Alfaro is the author of multiple articles published in leading academic journals, and of Harvard Business School cases related to the field of international economics and in particular international capital flows, foreign direct investment and sovereign debt. Her latest research has focused on the role local institutions play in attracting capital flows and allowing positive benefits of such flows, in particular foreign direct investment (FDI), to materialize. Other research interests include political economy, capital controls, and exchange-rate-based stabilization programs. She is also Faculty Research Fellow in the National Bureau of Economic Research's International Macroeconomics and Finance Program and Faculty Associate at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. In 2008, she was honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.  She served as Minister of National Planning and Economic Policy in Costa Rica from 2010-2012.

She earned her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1999, where she was recipient of the Dissertation Fellowship award. She received a B.A in economics with honors from the Universidad de Costa Rica in 1992 and a 'Licenciatura' from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica of Chile in 1994, where she graduated with highest honors. In 1992, she was awarded a Francisco Marroquin Foundation scholarship.