2023-2024 GCER Distinguished Visitor Series

March 4, 2024
Announcement of 2023-2024 Distinguished Visitor Series

We are pleased to announce the following three prominent scholars will be the GCER Distinguished Visitors for the 2023-2024 academic year.

Alessandra Voena is a labor and development economist whose research focuses primarily on the economics of the family and the economics of science and innovation. Dr. Voena is a Research Affiliate at CEPR, a faculty research fellow at NBER, and served as a Ruffolo Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. She received a PhD and MA in economics from Stanford University in 2011 and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Torino in Italy in 2005. She was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2017 and the Carlo Alberto Medal in the same year.

Alessandra will visit the economics department the week of March 11-14.


Mark Bils is a macroeconomist and the Hazel Fyfe Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester. Bils obtained his PhD in economics from MIT in 1985 and BA in economics from Ohio State University in 1979. He has taught at the University of Chicago GSB and has also been a long-term consultant in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. He is currently a NBER Associate and on the editorial board of multiple journals.

Mark will visit the economics department the week of April 15-19.


Jeff Woolridge is the Walter Adams Distinguished Faculty Professor in Economics at MSU, where he has taught since 1991. From 1986 to 1991, Dr. Wooldridge was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his doctorate in economics in 1986 from the University of California, San Diego. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society and of the Journal of Econometrics and currently serves on the editorial boards of multiple journals.

Jeff will visit the economics department the week of April 23-26.