2020 News

December 18, 2020
“COVID-19 Policy Response and Implications for our Economic Future”

A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz

RSVP Required

“COVID-19 Policy Responses and Implications for Our Economic Future,” A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz takes place online on

Friday, December 18, 2020
10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. EST

Location: Online (3:00 p.m – 4:00 p.m. London Time, 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Brussels Time)

Information and RSVP can be found here

GCER Fellow Francis Vella, the Edmond V. Villani Professor of Economics, is coordinating Georgetown’s participation in the Global Economic Challenges (GEC) Network. The GEC Network consists of a worldwide group of  universities and institutions that sponsor workshops led by leading scholars and policymakers to discuss the most pressing economic problems of the twenty-first century.


September 2, 2020
GCER Welcomes Two New Faculty Fellows

We are delighted to announce the arrival of two new members, Louise Laage and Margit Reischer.

Professor Laage joins the Department as an Assistant Professor of Economics and joins GCER as a Faculty Fellow. Professor Laage earned her PhD in 2019 from Yale. Her field is econometrics, with a research focus on nonparametric methods and on panel models with random coefficients. Laage develops methods that are usefully applied to labor supply models and related models with unobserved or time-varying endogeneity. 

Professor Reischer joins the Department as an Assistant Professor of Economics and joins GCER as a Faculty Fellow. Professor Reischer earned her PhD in 2019 from the University of Cambridge.  Her field is Macroeconomics  with a particular focus on the role of trade and production networks. Reischer uses both theory and quantitative methods to explore the macroeconomic effects of trade-credit linkages on growth, volatility,  and forecasting.


September 1, 2020
GCER Fellow wins Prestigious Hicks-Tinbergen Award

Congratulations to GCER Fellow Jose Asturias for receiving the Hicks-Tinbergen Award, along with co-authors Manuel García-Santana and Roberto Ramos. The three received the award for their paper  “Competition and the Welfare Gains from Transportation Infrastructure: Evidence from the Golden Quadrilateral of India”  published in the Journal of the European Economic Association (JEEA, Vol. 17).

The Hicks-Tinbergen Award is awarded every two years for the most outstanding article published in the JEEA during the two preceding years.

More about the paper and the award can be found here. 


August 10, 2020
Professor Janet Currie to deliver the 2019-2020 Razin Policy Lecture

Professor Janet Currie will deliver the 2019-2020 Razin Policy Lecture on Thursday, September 10, 2020 at 5 p.m. Registration is required to receive a link to the virtual event. More information will be posted soon.

Janet Currie is the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the Co-director of Princeton’s Center for Health and Wellbeing. She also co-directs the Program on Families and Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Currie serves as the President of the American Society of Health Economics, has served as the Vice President of the American Economics Association, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and of the American Academy of Art and Sciences. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Society of Labor Economists, and of the Econometric Society, and has honorary degrees from the University of Lyon and the University of Zurich. She was named a Nomis Distinguished Scientist in 2018.  She has served on the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science, as the Editor of the Journal of Economic Literature, and on the editorial boards of many other journals. Currie is a pioneer in the economic analysis of child development. Her current research focuses on socioeconomic differences in health and access to health care, environmental threats to health, and the important role of mental health.

The Razin Lecture is to be accompanied by the awarding of the Razin Prize for best research paper by an advanced graduate student.


May 15, 2020
GCER Fellow to host event for Global Economic Challenges Network

GCER Fellow Francis Vella, the Edmond V. Villani Professor of Economics, is coordinating Georgetown’s participation in the Global Economic Challenges (GEC) Network. The GEC Network consists of a worldwide group of  universities and institutions that sponsor workshops led by leading scholars and policymakers to discuss the most pressing economic problems of the twenty-first century. The next event, “Worker Protection: Reopening the World’s Economies in the Presence of COVID-19,” will take place online on May 22. 

Information and RSVP can be found here.


January 7, 2020
Marco Battaglini to give Public Lecture on Social Connections in Politics.

Professor Marco Battaglini will deliver his public lecture on “Social Connections in Politics (and other settings)” on Monday, January 13 at 4pm in McShain Large Lounge on the GU campus. Professor Battaglini is the Edward Meyer Professor of Economics at Cornell University. He  will visit the Economics Department for the week of January 13-17 as a part of the GCER Distinguished Visitor program. He received his PhD from Northwestern University in 2000 and has held faculty positions at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. His research lies in the intersection of game theory and political economy. One the most prominent scholars in this area, Professor Battaglini’s innovative work on the political dynamics of debt and fiscal policy influenced the way economists and political scientists think about inter-temporal trade-offs in the political sphere. His published work appears in top outlets in both economics and political science. These include, among others, American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Political Science Review, and the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. Professor Battaglini is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and, in 2009, a recipient of the Carlo Alberto Medal awarded to an Italian economist under the age of 40.