Elias Moises Sanchez Flores is a researcher in political economy with a focus on monetary theory, institutional analysis, and development. His work draws on Austrian and classical liberal traditions to examine central banking, financialisation, entrepreneurship, and the ethical foundations of money. He has contributed research on UK fiscal policy, decentralisation, and regional disparities, as well as on education and socio-economic exclusion in Latin America, particularly Bolivia. Elias is a Research Contributor at the Cobden Centre and, and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Global Development. 

Office hours

Thursday and Friday: 13.00 - 17.00

Research interests

My research interests lie at the intersection of political economy, economics, monetary theory, and institutional analysis, with a particular focus on the interplay between markets, governance, and development. Drawing on Austrian and classical liberal traditions, I critically examine central banking, inflation, and financialisation while advancing debates on entrepreneurship, innovation, and the ethical foundations of money. I am also engaged in the study of education and socio-economic exclusion in the Global South, especially how institutional barriers shape access to schooling and long-term development outcomes. Comparative work spans both the UK—through studies of fiscal policy, decentralisation, and regional disparities—and Latin America, where I investigate neo-extractivism, productivity, and macroeconomic crises. Across these strands, my work seeks to bridge theoretical and empirical approaches, combining qualitative analysis with econometric methods to assess how institutions and policies influence market performance, human agency, and sustainable growth.

Elias Sanchez is affiliated with the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London and serves as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Global Development, University of Leeds, where he contributes to the Leave No-One Behind in Education project on schooling inclusion for Tuareg communities in Libya and child miners in Bolivia. He has authored research for the University of Unitepc in Bolivia on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and the Economy, with forthcoming publication prospects in journals such as Scielo. He has also collaborated with the Leeds Policy Institute Macro-Policy Group on Unleashing Growth: Supporting Decentralisation and Establishing Municipal Bond Markets in the UK. 

Doctoral research

Capital, Entrepreneurship and Informal Markets against the Rational Economic Order in the Global South: An Austrian School Approach to the Case Study of Bolivia’s Extractivist Problem

This research investigates how extractivist political economies in the Global South, with Bolivia as a central case, constrain entrepreneurship, capital formation, and market dynamism through state-led intervention and resource dependency. Drawing on the Austrian School of Economics, it critiques the “rational economic order” imposed by central planning, fiscal mandates, and financialisation, arguing that such structures generate distortions in entrepreneurial calculation and undermine spontaneous market coordination. The study highlights the resilience of informal markets and entrepreneurial discovery as adaptive responses to institutional failure, while examining how extractivism perpetuates dependency, limits diversification, and obstructs long-term development. By integrating Austrian concepts of subjectivism, knowledge dispersion, and capital heterogeneity, the research reframes Bolivia’s extractivist problem as a crisis of misaligned institutions rather than a shortage of resources, offering insights into pathways for decentralisation, institutional reform, and economic liberty.

PhD supervisor

Professor Mark Pennington

Latest publications

Most recently, he has written for the Cobden Centre, a UK-based economic think tank, addressing the UK’s productivity challenges in Britain’s Double Bind: Inflation, Productivity, and the Limits of Monetary Policy, where he introduces the concept of Procustean Politics into Britain’s political-economic debate.