2019 News
December 19, 2019
Econ PhD Student Khanna Thesis on Menarche and Schooling Appears in Ideas for India.
Recent research by GU Economics PhD student Madhulika Khanna appears in the December edition of the blog Ideas for India. The article, based on Khanna’s PhD thesis, shows that onset of menses before age 12 causes a 13% decrease in female school enrollment rates in India. Her research shows that healthier girls have higher learning outcomes at age 12, but they also start menstruating earlier. Consequently, healthier girls are more likely to drop out of school. Ironically, their initial health advantage over other girls in their cohort disappears. More details can be found here.
October 21, 2019
GCER Frank Vella newly elected to Fellow of the IAAE
GCER Fellow Francis Vella was recently elected Fellow of the International Association for Applied Econometrics (IAAE). The IAAE is the leading academic association for advancing and supporting research in applied econometrics. IAAE Fellows include the most elite scholars in the field. Congratulations, Frank!
October 18, 2019
DC Political Economy Center (DCPEC) welcomes Distinguished Visitor, Francesco Trebbi (University of British Columbia)
Francesco Trebbi, University of British Columbia visiting Georgetown University next week as the second DC Political Economy Center Visitor. Professor Trebbi is the Canada Research Chair and Professor of Economics at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Fellow of the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research and serves as the co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics. His academic research focuses on political economy and applied economics more generally. He has worked on political institutions and their design, elections and campaign finance, housing and banking regulation, and lobbying.
Francesco will be visiting the Department of Economics at Georgetown University October 21-25, 2019. He will be available to meet on October 21, 22, and 24 and will give a lecture at the DCPEC Research Workshop on October 25, 2019.
To learn more about DCPEC, check the website: www.dcpolecon.org.
September 28, 2019
Upcoming GCER Mini-Conference on Non-standard Methods in Econometrics
The GCER Mini-conference on Non-Standard Methods in Econometrics will be held on Friday, October 4, 2019. The goal of the conference is to bring forth some of the technical methods that have been used in econometrics. Those include but are not limited to: functional analysis, regular variation, shapes, optimization theory. The mini-conference features papers that focus on novel theoretical approaches or tools proposed to address existing empirical problems.
The conference will take place in the Intercultural Center Building, Room 550, from 1:30pm-5:30pm. The Conference program can be found on the GCER Calendar, or at this link.
August 28, 2019
GCER Distinguished Visitor Public Lecture
The first GCER Distinguished Visitor Public Lecture will be delivered by Luigi Pistaferri, Professor of Economics at Stanford University. His talk, “Wealth inequality and Returns Heterogeneity,” will take place at 4:00 pm, Tuesday, September 10, 2019 in Copley Formal Lounge on the Georgetown University Campus.
More information on Professor Pistaferri and this year’s GCER Distinguished Visitors Program can be found here.
August 23, 2019
GU’s Economics Department in the top 25.
Georgetown’s Department of Economics currently ranks in the top 25 among U.S. Economics Departments in the July 2019 ranking by IDEAS, the largest bibliographic database on economic research and institutions on the Internet.
August 23, 2019
GCER Welcomes its Newest Faculty Fellow
We are delighted to announce the arrival of our newest member. Minsu Chang will be joining the Department as an Assistant Professor of Economics and joining GCER as a Faculty Fellow.
Professor Chang earned her PhD in 2019 from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work in the field of macroeconomics focuses on the role of individual heterogeneity in market outcomes. Chang has published research in The Econometrics Journal and The Journal of Applied Econometrics. Her PhD thesis studies how marriage and divorce rates account for changes in housing decisions over the life cycle of individuals in the United States.
August 22, 2019
2019-2020 GCER Distinguished Visitors Series
The eighth year of the GCER Distinguished Visitor Series features a number of prominent economists who will spend time in the Department of Economics at Georgetown University during the 2019-2020 academic year. This year’s Distinguished Visitors include:
Luigi Pistaferri, Stanford University
Harry Paarsch, University of Central Florida
Eric French, University College London
Marco Battaglini, Cornell University
Edward Vytlacil, Yale University
Kenneth Wolpin, Rice University
More information can be found by accessing the following link.
July 18, 2019
GCER launches DC Political Economy Center
The GCER community is pleased to announce the launch of the DC Political Economy Center (DCPEC), a joint endeavor between GCER/Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University.
DCPEC will serve as a hub for the community of political economists in the DC area. It fosters research in political economy at different stages of development, and disseminates that research within and beyond the DC area. Among its many initiatives are the Washington Political Economy Conference, the DCPEC Distinguished Visitor Program, regular research workshops, and post-doctoral fellowships.
To learn more about DCPEC, check the website: www.dcpolecon.org
April 9, 2019
GCER Fellow Alexandre Poirier’s work featured in the Spring/Summer Research Profile
The Spring/Summer Featured Profile highlights the recent work of Georgetown economist and GCER Fellow Alexandre Poirier. In two recent papers entitled “Identification of Treatment Effects under Conditional Partial Independence” and “Inference in Breakdown Frontiers” with co-author Matthew Masten of Duke University, Poirier proposes a framework to analyze the sensitivity of empirical results to the “quasi-randomization” assumption, the assumption that observational data essentially mimics the outcome of a randomized experiment…
For the full research profile, please click here.
April 1, 2019
Upcoming 2019 GCER Distinguished Visitors
The GCER Distinguished Visitor Series continues with two more prominent economists who will spend time in the Department of Economics at Georgetown University.
April 1-5, 2019 Stephen Morris, Princeton University
April 29-May 3, 2019 Fabien Postel-Vinay, University College London
More information can be found by accessing the following link.
March 21, 2019
Erik Snowberg to arrive as the first DCPEC Distinguished Scholar
Erik Snowberg, the Canada Excellence Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, arrives the week of March 25-29 as the first Distinguished Scholar in the newly minted DC Political Economy Center (DCPEC). He will have an office in the Department of Economics at Georgetown University and will participate in the DCPEP Local Area Workshop on Friday, March 29 on the GU campus. DCPEC is a joint initiative between the Georgetown Center for Economic Research (GCER) at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies. DCPEC’s goal is to provide a forum for researchers in political economy, broadly defined, to foster a local political economy community in the DC area.
March 21, 2019
Third Annual GCER-Cemmap Applied Micro Conference to be held on GU Campus
The Georgetown Center for Economic Research is pleased to announce the Third Annual Applied Microeconomics Conference will be held on May 10, 2019. This year, the special focus is on health and labor. The conference, co-sponsored with the Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, a joint venture by the Department of Economics University College London and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, will take place at Copley Formal Lounge on the Georgetown University campus. The conference program can be accessed by clicking here. More information on the Gcer-cemmap Conference can be accessed by clicking here.
February 22, 2019
Chief Economist of the World Bank and Yale Professor Pinelopi Goldberg to deliver the 2019 Razin Lecture (Next Week) on Tuesday, February 26, 2019 at 11:00 a.m.
Professor Pinelopi Goldberg will deliver the 2019 Razin Policy Lecture. The lecture will take place next week on Tuesday, February 26, 2019 at 11am in the Copley Formal Lounge on Georgetown University’s campus. A reception will follow.
Pinelopi Goldberg is the Chief Economist of the World Bank Group, on leave as the Elihu Professor of Economics at Yale University. She is currently Vice-President of the American Economic Association, the President of the Eastern Economic Association and set to serve as President of the Econometric Society in 2021. She is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Board Member of the Bureau for Research on the Economic Analysis of Development, and currently on leave as Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She served as Editor-in-Chief of the American Economic Review from 2011-17.
Goldberg holds a Ph.D. from Stanford and was a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2010-11 and the Bodossaki Prize in Social Sciences in 2003. She has authored numerous articles in the fields of applied microeconomics, industrial organization, and international trade. Her current research centers on intellectual property rights enforcement in developing countries, the impact of trade liberalization on growth and income distribution, and incomplete exchange rate and cost pass-through.
The Razin Lecture is to be accompanied by the awarding of the Razin Prize for best research paper by an advanced graduate student.
Click here for more on the Razin Prize and Policy Lecture, its background, and history.
February 1, 2019
Becka Brolinson awarded the 2019 Razin Prize
The Georgetown Center for Economic Research is proud to announce that Becka Brolinson, PhD Candidate in Economics, has been awarded the 2019 Razin Prize for her research paper entitled, “Does Increasing Block Pricing Decrease Energy Use? Evidence from the Residential Electricity Market.”
We also would like to extend our congratulations to her thesis advisor, Professor Arik Levinson.
The presentation of the award will take place on Tuesday, February 26, 2019 during the annual Department of Economics Razin Policy Lecture. The event will start at 11:00 a.m. in the Copley Formal Lounge located on the Georgetown University Campus. The keynote address will be given by Pinelopi Goldberg, Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Elihu Professor of Economics at Yale University.
Click here for more on the Razin Prize and Policy Lecture, its background, and history.
January 28, 2019
Upcoming 2019 GCER Distinguished Visitors
The GCER Distinguished Visitor Series continues with two more prominent economists who will spend time in the Department of Economics at Georgetown University.
April 1-5, 2019 Stephen Morris, Princeton University
April 29-May 3, 2019 Fabien Postel-Vinay, University College London
More information can be found by accessing the following link.
January 4, 2019
Research by GU Econ PhD Candidate Dario Sansone featured in the Economist.
Research by Georgetown University PhD Candidate Dario Sansone was recently summarized in an article in the Economist Magazine’s January 2, 2019 online edition.
Dario’s research examines the effect of legalizing same-sex marriage in the U.S. on labor market outcomes and participation rates for same-sex couples. His research indicates that legalization resulted in reduced workplace discrimination and in increased employment levels among same-sex couples.