Barbara Petrongolo is a Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College. She is Director of the CEPR Labour Economics Programme and Research Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance of the London School of Economics. She previously held positions at Queen Mary University of London, the London School of Economics, the Paris School of Economics and the University of Carlos III (Madrid). She is currently managing co-editor of the Economic Journal. Her primary research interests are in labour economics. She has worked extensively on the performance of labour markets with job search frictions, with applications to unemployment dynamics, welfare policy and interdependencies across local labour markets. Her work also researches the causes of gender inequalities in labour market outcomes, in a historical perspective and across countries, with emphasis on the role of employment selection mechanisms, structural transformation, and interactions within the household.

She joined IZA as a Research Fellow in October 2002.