Rate My Professor Francisco Beltrán Tapia

Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia is Professor of Economic History in the Department of Historical Sciences at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He received his PhD in Economic History from the University of Oxford in 2014. His research operates at the intersection between economic history and historical demography, focusing on the factors that shaped parents’ investments in children’s health and education. Other research interests include inequality, gender discrimination, migration, collective resources, and population growth. Beltrán Tapia teaches courses that promote quantitative and computational methods among historians, including Quantitative Methods for Historians (HIKU8863, MA/PhD level) and Digital Mapping for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (HIST8872, MA/PhD level).

Beltrán Tapia leads research projects such as the FRIPRO-funded 'What was in a name? Culture and naming practices in the past' and 'Missing Girls in Historical Europe.' His publications appear in top journals and address key historical phenomena. Select works include 'Missing girls in Liberal Italy, 1861–1921' (with Gabriele Cappelli), The Economic History Review 77, 1 (2024): 185–211; 'Pre-natal care, son preference and the sex ratio at birth' (with Rebeca Echavarri), Demography 62, 1 (2025): 211–236; 'Society, economy and missing girls in 18th-century Spain' (with Alfonso Díez-Minguela and Julio Martínez-Galarraga), The History of the Family (2026); 'Death, sex and fertility: Female infanticide in rural Spain, 1750-1950' (2020); 'Two stories, one fate: Age-heaping and literacy in Spain, 1877-1930' (with Alfonso Díez-Minguela and Julio Martínez-Galarraga, 2022); 'Class, literacy and social mobility: Madrid, 1880–1905' (with Santiago de Miguel Salanova, 2021); 'Sex ratios and gender discrimination in Modern Greece' (with Michail Raftakis, 2023); and 'Enclosing literacy? Common lands and human capital in Spain, 1860-1930,' Journal of Institutional Economics (2013). His Google Scholar profile records 1243 citations.