He received the French Baccalauréat from the Lycée Franco-Mexicain in Mexico City. He graduated with an A.B. in history from Princeton University in 1973 after completing a 241-page long senior thesis titled "The Movement of the Revolutionary Left in Chile: 1965-1972." Then after receiving his Ph.D. in Economic History from the University of Paris (Panthéon-La Sorbonne) he worked as a professor at several universities, including the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, New York University, and the University of Cambridge. He was a Bernard Schwartz fellow at The New America Foundation.