Carolina Alves specialises in macroeconomics and international political economy, with a regional focus on Latin America. Her research extensively covers international trade, uneven development, international financial flows, financial globalisation, and the international monetary order, all approached through the lens of global changes in politics, economics, and governance since the 1970s. Additionally, she has devoted significant study to the labour theory of value and Marxist Economic Theory. She is deeply committed to critically and constructively engaging with mainstream economics, offering alternative perspectives from political economy that address the nature of contemporary capitalism, as well as related policy and applied issues.

Since completing her PhD, her research has expanded to include fiscal and monetary policy, along with an analysis of selected manuals and guidelines from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) on government bond markets. Her work assesses the extent to which IMF/WB literature on public debt management promotes the strengthening of domestic bond markets to attract investment, while downplaying the constraints imposed by financial globalisation and potential conflicts between fiscal and monetary policy. This exploration of fiscal and monetary policy, alongside government bonds, has sparked a growing interest in the nature of money and credit systems.

Her PhD focused on the dynamics of Brazilian public debt between 1994 and 2014, analysing the vicious circle between financial liberalisation, high interest rates, and the growth of domestic public debt within the context of neoliberalism and financialisation. Prior to her PhD, she worked on topics related to financial capital, the labour theory of value, and social classes. During her MPhil, she explored the historical and theoretical development of the relationship between value and labour within economics. Additionally, she served as a research assistant for the State of São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP – BR), contributing to a project on government income transfer strategies. The project’s primary outcome was the creation of a methodology for evaluating and training social workers involved in income transfer programmes in Brazil.