Alumni and Friends of the Department of Economics,

Northwestern has now completed its academic year, culminating with our June graduation ceremonies. The campus is quiet, with students and faculty scattered around the world. I’m writing to update you on developments of the past six months in the Department of Economics.

We have seen, as we do almost every year, the departure of some valued colleagues and the arrival of others. Matthias Doepke has moved to LSE, Yingni Guo has moved to Duke University, and Sara Hernandez-Saborit has moved to Charles River Associates.  

We held a conference in honor of Bob Gordon, who is retiring this summer after 52 years on the Northwestern faculty.  Bob will be an Emeritus Professor, and he will teach a freshman seminar for the department next year.  We also held a conference in honor of Joel Horowitz, who will retire in the summer of 2026 after 25 years on our faculty. 

The department had a busy recruiting year.  Abi Adams (Ph.D. Oxford) was a visiting professor from Oxford this past academic year, and she accepted our offer to join our faculty as a full professor this fall.  Abi is a labor economist and applied microeconomist with broad research interests. Kunal Sangani (Ph.D. Harvard) spent last year at Stanford as a post-doc and will join us this summer as an Assistant Professor.  Kunal is a macroeconomist who works on topics such as inflation, aggregate productivity, and firm behavior. Chiara Sotis (Ph.D. LSE) will join our faculty as an Assistant Professor of Instruction this fall.  Chiara’s research lies at the intersection of behavioral, environmental, and health economics.  Frank Limbrock (Ph.D. Yale), a health economist who has taught courses for us for several years, will join our faculty as an Associate Professor of Instruction in 2026.

Several of our faculty members have received honors and recognition. Matt Rognlie was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship. Mar Reguant was elected as a Fellow of the Econometric Society.  

We are saying goodbye to another class of Ph.D. students who have been placed throughout the private sector, government agencies, and academic institutions, including Bocconi, Chicago, Cornell, Mannheim, Notre Dame, Rutgers, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, Wisconsin, and Yale.  We are delighted with the outstanding work of our graduate students.  At the same time, we look forward to the arrival in August of our entering Ph.D. class.

We continue to attract many undergraduate students, with more than 300 Economics majors graduating this year, and more than 1,100 undergraduate majors in total.  In these uncertain times, an Economics major helps prepare our students for their professional careers and to be more informed about current economic issues.

Northwestern and many of our peers have been confronted this year with budgetary issues. Our department has cut spending and postponed our faculty recruiting.  We have not yet had to compromise our research and teaching missions.  But these are difficult times for higher education, and there remains considerable uncertainty about our future funding and expenses and our ability to attract international students and faculty. 

Finally, with September fast approaching, my term as chair of the Department is coming to an end. I would like to thank my colleagues and our wonderful staff for all their help and cooperation during that time. Jeff Ely has been appointed as my successor.  I wish Jeff the best of luck and know that you will be as invaluable to him as you have been to me in keeping Northwestern among the very best places in the world to study economics.