Geographer from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (1974), Master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the Coordination of Graduate Programs in Engineering (COPPE) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (1979) and PhD in Economics from the State University of Campinas (1993). He did postdoctoral work at the Centro de Estudios Avanzados at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. He was a visiting professor at the Centro Panamericano de Estudios e Investigaciones Geográficas (CEPEIGE-Quito, Ecuador), Université Jean Moulin – Lyon III (Lyon – France), Ecole Normale Superieure (Paris – France) and Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III (Paris – France).