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 our homepage for more publications and news!
Vivek Bhattacharya was awarded a grant from the Naval Postgraduate School for "Understanding the Incentives of Small Businesses to Participate in the Acquisition Process for R&D-Intensive Products."
Ivan Canay holds an NSF grant for the project "Econometric Methods for Models with Clustered Data and Covariate-Adaptive Randomization.” He continues to serve on the editorial board of the Econometrics Journal. Recent publications include: Canay I. A. and V. Kamat (2018): “Approximate Permutation Tests and Induced Order Statistics in the Regression Discontinuity Design”, The Review of Economic Studies, 85 (3), 1577-1608 and Bugni, F.A., I. A. Canay, and A. M. Shaikh (2018): “Inference under Covariate-Adaptive Randomization”, Journal of the American Statistical Association, forthcoming.
Eddie Dekel completed his term as Past President and member of the executive committee of the Econometric Society on Dec 31, 2017. His paper "Disclosure and Choice," joint with Elchanan Ben Porat (Hebrew University ofJerusalem) and Barton Lipman (Boston University), was published in the Review of Economic Studies, 85 (3) on 1 July 2018.
Robert J. Gordon’s research on the industry sources of the productivity growth slowdown is supported by a two-year grant for 2017-19 from the Smith-Richardson foundation. He serves on the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, the Advisory Panel of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Advisory Board of Macro Advisers, and the Advisory Council of the Chicago Federal Reserve. He gave keynote addresses at the Supply Chain Insights Global Summit in Atlanta, Stansberry Research Conference in Las Vegas, HSBC Global Investment Seminar in Chicago, and the Brussels Economic Forum. He gave lectures at Boston College, LUISS University in Rome, MIT, Rice University, and the Vermont Humanities Council. Robert J. Gordon was quoted or cited in the Australian Financial Review, Economist, Fortune, New Yorker, New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, and Wall Street Journal. Recent publications include: Robert J. Gordon, “Slowing Economic Growth Despite Ongoing Innovation,” Explorations in Economic History, no. 69, pp. 1-12 and “Friedman and Phelps on the Phillips Curve Viewed from a Half-Century’s Perspective,” Review of Keynesian Economics, Winter 2018, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 425-36.
Joel Horowitz was elected a fellow of the International Association for applied econometrics. Joel Horowitz and Ph.D. graduate Anand Krishnamurthy published a paper entitled “A Bootstrap Method for Constructing Pointwise and Uniform Confidence Bands for Conditional Quantile Functions” in Statistica Sinica. Joel Horowitz and Sokbae Lee published a paper entitled “Nonparametric Estimation and Inference under Shape Restrictions” in the Journal of Econometrics. Joel Horowitz, Richard Blundell and Matthias Parey published a paper entitled “Nonparametric Estimation of a Nonseparable Demand Function under the Slutsky Inequality Restriction” in the Review of Economics and Statistics. Joel Horowitz presented a paper entitled “Non-Asymptotic Inference in Instrumental Variables Estimation” at the annual conference of the Bristol Econometrics Study Group, Bristol UK. Joel Horowitz organized the first of what will be a biennial conference of former Northwestern econometrics Ph.D. students. The conference was held in May 2018.
Seema Jayachandran became the inaugural chair of the Gender Sector at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), after serving for six years as co-chair of J-PAL’s Health Sector. She continues to serve on the Board of Directors for J-PAL, as well as the Bureau for Research and Economic Development (BREAD). She became a co-editor at American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, and she continues to serve as associate editor at the Quarterly Journal of Economics and Journal of Economic Perspectives. Her work on using financial incentives to reduce deforestation was awarded the 2018 Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America for the greatest scholarly contribution on ecosystem sustainability published in the previous 5 years. Seema Jayachandran is an occasional contributor to the New York Times Economic View column that runs in the Sunday business section and "explores life through an economic lens with leading economists and writers." Recent publications include: Seema Jayachandran and Rohini Pande (2018), “Why Are Indian Children So Short? The Role of Birth Order and Son Preference,” American Economic Review, 107(9), pp. 2600-2629.
Joel Mokyr was selected as a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association in 2018. He received a doctorate honoris causa from the National University of Uruguay in December. His book A Culture of Growth was the co-winner of the Allan Sharlin Memorial Book Award awarded annually for an outstanding book in social science history to honor the memory of Allan Sharlin. His paper “Cognitive Rules, Institutions and Economic Growth: Douglass North and Beyond,” with Avner Greif was the winner of the Elinor Ostrom prize for best article published in the Journal of Institutional Economics in 2017. He gave the keynote address at the ECFIN group meeting on productivity at the EU in Brussels in November 2018.
Wojciech Olszewski was elected to the Council of the Game Theory Society. He continued to serve as an associate editor of Econometrica, Theoretical Economics and American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. Recent publications include: Wojciech Olszewski and Mikhail Safronov, Efficient Chip Strategies in Repeated Games, Theoretical Economics 15 (3), 951–978. Wojciech Olszewski and Mikhail Safronov, Efficient cooperation by exchanging favors, Theoretical Economics 15 (3), 1191–1232.
Alessandro Pavan continues to serve as Lead Editor of the Journal of Economic Theory. His NSF grant for the project “Coordination and Information Design” was renewed for two more years. He continues to serve as a research fellow for the Center for Economic Policy Research. Alessandro presented his paper “Robust Predictions in Dynamic Screening” (joint with Daniel Garrett and Juuso Toikka) at the 2018 Transatlantic Theory Conference, at Bocconi University, and at Universitad Carlos III of Madrid. He presented his paper “Persuasion in Global Games with Application to Stress Testing” (joint with Nicolas Inostroza) at Bocconi University, the University of Bonn, the University of Miami, the Toulouse School of Economics, the 2018 Cambridge INET Conference on Economic Theory, NYU, and the European University Institute. He was invited to present his paper “Price Customization and Targeting in Platform Markets” at the 2018 CEPR-Gertzensee Conference on Economic Theory, the 2018 EIEF Conference on the Economics of Platforms, the National University of Singapore, and Bologna University. He was invited to present his paper “Taxation under Learning-by-Doing” (with Miltos Makris) at Harvard and at the University of Zurich. He was invited to give a talk on “Taxation with Endogenous Types” at the 2018 WUSL Annual Conference on Taxation Theory. Recent publications include: “Information Management and Pricing in Platform Markets” (with Bruno Jullien) in the Review of Economic Studies.
Robert Porter was awarded the 2018 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management, together with Timothy Bresnahan and Ariel Pakes. He is serving as the Vice President of the Industrial Organization Society. He gave a Keynote Address at the OECD Workshop on Cartel Screening in the Digital Era, in Paris, January 2018. He is one of the founding Editors of Microeconomic Insights, a website that provides accessible summaries of high quality microeconomic research.
Ian Savage served as the 2017-18 President of the Transportation Research Forum.