Faculty Updates
Our faculty have been busy this year advancing the bounds of economic scholarship, engaging the world and setting high standards for our students. Visit the homepage for more publications and news and see what podcasts faculty recommend!
IVAN CANAY
Ivan Canay continues as one of two co-Editors of the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics. This past year he also won the Phase II NSF TRIPODS award to support The Institute for Data, Econometrics, Algorithms, and Learning (IDEAL), a multi-discipline and multi-institution collaborative institute on data science, where he is part of the executive committee. Two main areas of his current research include the study of outcome tests to detect bias in decision making and the identification of different types of causal treatment effects in settings with delayed outcomes. His most recent journal publication includes “On the implementation of Approximate Randomization Tests in Linear Models with a Small Number of Clusters” (joint Yong Cai, Deborah Kim, and Azeem Shaikh), in the Journal of Econometric Methods.
Robert J. Gordon
Robert J. Gordon released a new NBER working paper, “A New Interpretation of Productivity Growth Dynamics in the Pre-Pandemic and Pandemic-Era U.S. Economy” (with Hassan Sayed), that was featured as the lead article in the October 2022 NBER Digest. He presented this paper at the ASSA Annual Meeting in New Orleans. He delivered the keynote speech at the Productivity and Macroeconomics Conference organized by the Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, Germany, and also gave a presentation on innovation and secular stagnation at the Technology and Society Conference at CUNY. He was chair and discussant at a session on “Measuring Worth” at the Social Science History Association meetings in Chicago. He continues as a member of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, which will decide whether the U.S. experiences a recession in 2023.
WALKER HANLON
Walker Hanlon's recent research focuses on the Industrial Revolution, the historical Demographic Transition, and the development of modern forms of government intervention during the nineteenth century. One of his recent papers, "Culture and the Historical Fertility Transition," forthcoming at the Review of Economic Studies, looks at how cultural change contributed to falling fertility during the nineteenth century. Another recent paper, "The Rise of the Engineer," shows the contribution that the emergence of the engineering profession made to sustaining innovation during the Industrial Revolution. He is also finishing up a book, under contract with Princeton University Press, on Britain's nineteenth-century experiment with laissez-faire government.
Dean Karlan
Dean Karlan is taking a leave of absence to serve as the new Chief Economist of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
ALESSANDRO PAVAN
This year Alessandro Pavan’s research focused on cognition in games, subsidies to technology adoption, information aggregation in financial markets, and competing principals. He published the following articles:
- "Price Customization and Targeting in Matching Markets," with Renato Gomes, a forthcoming article in the RAND Journal of Economics
- "Preparing for the Worst but Hoping for the Best: Robust (Bayesian) Persuasion,” with Piotr Dworczak in Econometrica
- "Wall Street and Silicon Valley: A Delicate Interaction,” with George-Marios Angeletos and Guido Lorenzoni, in the Review of Economic Studies
- "Two-sided Markets, Pricing, and Network Effects,” with Bruno Jullien and Marc Rysman in the Handbook of Industrial Organization
- "Matching Auctions,” with Daniel Fershtman in the RAND Journal of Economics
- “Two-Sided Markets, Platforms, and Matching Design,” with Renato Gomes in the forthcoming book Online and Matching-Based Market Design (Echenique, Immorlica and Vazirani Editors, Cambridge University Press)
He was invited to join the research council of the Toulouse School of Economics and the editorial board of the Econometric Society Monographs Series. He presented his work at various conferences and workshops and was invited to give a plenary talk at the Stony Brook Game Theory Festival.
Giorgio Primiceri
Giorgio Primiceri was named Fellow of the Econometric Society.
Marciano Siniscalchi
Marciano Siniscalchi's most recent publication is "Structural Rationality in Dynamic Games," Econometrica, vol. 90 no.5, September 2022. This paper proposes a novel experimental method, as well as supporting theoretical results, to investigate players' beliefs when they are surprised by the actions of other players. Siniscalchi was also invited to present a related paper, "Foundations for Structural Rationality," at the Cowles Foundation Conference on Economic Theory at Yale in June 2022.
CHRIS UDRY
Chris Udry’s publications (with various coauthors) over the past year have addressed a series of interventions designed to alleviate some of the most damaging consequences of severe poverty in Ghana, Niger, and Togo (listed respectively):
- “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Among Ghana’s Rural Poor is Effective Regardless of Baseline Mental Distress,” American Economic Review Insights, December 2022
- “Tackling Psychosocial and Capital Constraints Opens Pathways out of Poverty,” Nature, May 2022
- “Machine Learning and Phone Data can Improve Targeting of Humanitarian Aid,” Nature, March 2022
He and Tavneet Suri published an overview of “Agricultural Technology in Africa" (Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2022) and an associated VoxDev literature review.
back to newsletter