Mercedes Teruel is an associate professor at the department of Economics of Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV). After studying Business Management (1999) and Economics (2001), she obtained her MSc in Economics at the University of Essex in 2005, and her PhD at URV in 2006. From 2010 to 2017, she was in charge of the Bachelor in Economics and academic secretary of the Dean's office. Since 2017 she is the Director of the Chair for the Promotion of Firm Innovation and since 2021 she is the Coordinator of the Master in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Her research interests include firm growth, empirical industrial organization and innovation. Her publications have appeared in the Small Business Economics, Research Policy, Growth and Change, Industrial and Corporate Change, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization and Economics of Innovation and New Technology.

She is also Associate Editor, Applied Economic Analysis (2019), Advisory Editor in Research Policy (2021) and member of the Editorial Board Review in Small Business Economics (2021).

She is also winner of the Richard R. Nelson Prize (2016) awarded by the editors of Industrial and Corporate Change and Research Policy. The award recognizes a research paper (in alternating years) in Research Policy or ICC that has made a substantial contribution to the literature. The paper is co-authored joined with Alexander Coad and entitled "Inter-firm competition and firm growth: Is there any evidence of direct competition between firms?", published in Industrial and Corporate Change, 22, 397-425 (2013).