INVITED SPEAKERS – By session
Saturday, November 18
7. Rethinking Education in Latin America
a. Maria Marta Ferreyra
Dr. Ferreyra is a senior economist at the Global Engagement and Knowledge unit of the Education Global Practice of the World Bank. Previously, she was a senior economist at the Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean. Her research specializes in the economics of education. She is the lead author of At a Crossroads: Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean and The Fast Track to New Skills: Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the co-lead author of Raising the Bar for Productive Cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. She has conducted research on school choice, accountability, and finance in primary and secondary education in the United States (US); childcare markets in the US; higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC); and cities in LAC. Her research has been published in journals such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Public Economics, and the American Economic Journal—Economic Policy. Prior to joining the World Bank, Dr. Ferreyra served as a faculty member at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
b. Christian Posso
Dr. Posso is a researcher at the Banco de la República de Colombia. He holds a Ph.D. and a master’s degree in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a master’s degree in economics from the Universidad del Valle. His research interests primarily focus on the economics of education, labor economics, and the impact evaluation of social programs. Dr. Posso is particularly interested in studying topics related to household economics, family economics, multiple equation/simultaneous equation models, multiple variables, project evaluation, and social discount rates.
8. Women in politics and leadership
a. Cesi Cruz
Professor Cruz is the June and Alexander Jaffee Chair in Women and Politics associate professor in the department of political science at UCLA. She works on topics at the intersection of political science and economics, with a focus on how information and social networks affect electoral incentives and economic outcomes. Her work has been published in outlets such as the American Political Science Review, the American Economic Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Economic Journal, Comparative Political Studies, and the Review of International Organizations. Professor Cruz is a board member of Experiments in Governance and Politics (EGAP), the Southeast Asia Research Group (SEAREG), and Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC). In addition, she serves on the board of Women Also Know Stuff, an organization to promote women’s scholarship in political science. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, San Diego; a M.A. from McGill University, Montréal, Québec; and a B.A. in political science and economics from the same university.
b. Stephen O'Connell
Dr. O'Connell is an applied economist specializing in social protection and inclusion. His research focuses on utilizing empirical methods to examine how scalable policies can enhance economic opportunities, particularly for socially excluded or economically vulnerable populations. Dr. O'Connell's work encompasses the integration of labor economics, development economics, and microeconomics, combined with field research on various topics such as gender, employment, entrepreneurship, forced displacement, and social policy design. Throughout his career, Dr. O'Connell has collaborated with governments and international NGOs in countries including India, Brazil, and Lebanon, among others. He has received funding for his research from institutions such as the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Russell Sage Foundation. Dr. O’Connell is a postdoctoral fellow in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the City University of New York and holds a B.A. from Boston College.
9. Welfare programs, policy interventions and the family
a. Orazio Attanasio
Professor Attanasio is the Cowles Professor of Economics at Yale University. He obtained his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. He is Research Fellow and Director at the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Senior Fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic and Policy Research. He served as President of the Econometric Society in 2020. Professor Attanasio has received prestigious awards such as the Carlos Diaz Alejandro Prize by LACEA and the Klaus Jacobs Research Prize by the Jacobs Foundation. His research interests encompass various areas, including household consumption, saving and labor supply behavior, risk sharing, and human capital accumulation in developing countries. He has conducted evaluations of education financing and access programs, including large conditional cash transfer programs. His policy-focused work extends to countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Chile, India, and Ghana.
b. Costas Meghir
Professor Meghir is the Douglas A. Warner III Professor of Economics at Yale University. He obtained his Ph.D. from Manchester University. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a Fellow of the Society for Labor Economics. He was awarded the Ragnar Frisch medal by the Econometric Society in 2000 and the Bodosakis Foundation prize in 1997. He has been co-editor of Econometrica and joint managing editor of the Economic Journal. His current research is focused on informal labor markets, labor supply, and welfare programs; the economics of the family, including marriage markets and intrahousehold allocation of resources; and human capital and early childhood development (ECD). He is involved in designing and testing ECD interventions by RCT in both developing countries and the US, aimed at improving child outcomes and mitigating the intergenerational transmission of poverty.
10. From Bretton Woods to the European Currency Union
a. Paulina Restrepo-Ecahavarría
Dr. Restrepo-Echavarria is a Senior Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Her research interests are in the fields of international macroeconomics and search theory. She has done work on the direction of capital flows, debt crises, sovereign default in commodity-rich economies, the incidence of the informal sector in the macroeconomy, labor market frictions, and theoretical models of the marriage and dating markets. Her work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Theory, and the European Economic Review, among others. She was conferred the Rodrigo Gomez International Central Banking Award in 2005 for her work on inflation targeting. Dr. Restrepo-Echavarría was an Assistant Professor of economics at Ohio State University and worked as a researcher at Banco de La República de Colombia. She now teaches International Economics for second- and third-year Ph.D. students at Washington University in St. Louis, is an Associate Editor for the Review of Economic Dynamics and is a member of the Potential GDP committee for the Finance Ministry of the country of Colombia. In her free time, she serves on the board of directors of Fields of Dreams Uganda, a non-profit organization for orphan children in Uganda. Dr. Restrepo-Echavarría received her Ph.D. in Economics from UCLA.
b. Linda Tesar
Professor Tesar is the Alan V. Deardorff Collegiate Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan and the Senior Faculty Advisor to the Dean on Strategic Budgetary Affairs. She is the co-director of the International Finance and Macroeconomic Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Tesar is a research affiliate of the Center for Economic Policy Research, the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research, the Bellagio Group, and a member of the AEA 2023 Program Committee. She has been a visitor in the research departments of the University of Zurich, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the International Monetary Fund, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis. She has also served on the Academic Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago and New York. Professor Tesar has served as the editor of the IMF Economic Review and is on the advisory board of the Carnegie-NYU-Rochester Conference on Public Policy. She is also actively engaged in efforts to improve the climate for women and underrepresented groups in the economics discipline. Professor Tesar’s research focuses on issues in international finance, with particular interests in the international transmission of business cycles and fiscal policy, the benefits of global risksharing, capital flows to emerging markets, the determination of long-run interest rates, international tax competition, labor mobility, and the challenges facing the euro area. Some of her work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of International Economics, and the Journal of Monetary Economics.
11. Advances in industrial organization
a. Matthew Grennan
Professor Grennan joined the Haas School of Business at UC-Berkeley as the Robinson Chancellor’s Chair and Faculty Co-Director of the Robinson Life Science, Business, and Entrepreneurship program. He is an Associate Professor in the Economic Analysis and Policy and Innovation and Entrepreneurship groups. He received his Ph.D. from NYU (Stern). He is also a Faculty Research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an editor at the Journal of Political Economy and Microeconomics. Professor Grennan’s research studies health care markets, products, and organizations using empirical and theoretical models from industrial organization economics. He has received teaching awards from Wharton, Toronto (Rotman), and Poets & Quants. His research has been published in the top general-interest journals in economics, management, and policy, including the American Economic Review, Management Science, and Health Affairs. Professor Grennan’s research has been funded through leading institutions such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institute for Health Care Management.
b. Katja Seim
Professor Seim is the Sharon Oster Professor of Economics and Management at Yale University, with joint appointments in the School of Management and the Department of Economics. Her research focuses on topics of industrial organization and applied microeconomics. She studies how firms respond to public policies, including entry and technology deployment regulations, competition policy, and tax policy, in their entry, product positioning, and pricing choices. Her work also evaluates the role of market power in affecting the efficiency and distributional outcomes of government auctions to procure goods and services and sell assets. In the 2016–17 academic year, she served as Chief Economist at the Federal Communications Commission. Professor Seim is a co-editor of the American Economic Review. She earned her Ph.D. from Yale University and holds a B.A. from Franklin & Marshall College.
12. Advances in economic theory
a. Renee Bowen
Professor Bowen is a Professor at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) and the Department of Economics. Between 2008 and 2017, she was an Assistant Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Professor Bowen's research focuses on political economy, microeconomic theory, and international trade. In her work, she applies dynamic game theory to study the behavior of individuals who are constrained by institutions and who have long-term strategic considerations. Her recent work examines the dynamics of power in bargaining, the status quo effects of trade policy, and how learning from shared news leads to belief polarization. Professor Bowen received her Ph.D. in Economics from Georgetown University and her BSc in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is a member of the California Governor's Council of Economic Advisors, the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Center for Economic Policy Research. She has been a consultant at the World Bank working on international trade policy for sub-Saharan Africa and was an investment banking analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities working with emerging markets. She teaches international economics to MPP and MIA students and political economy theory to Ph.D. students.
b. Rahul Deb
Professor Deb is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University and a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Professor Deb has held various positions at the University of Toronto, including Associate Professor and Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics. He has also been involved in editorial roles, having served as an Associate Editor for Theoretical Economics and as an Editorial Advisor for the Canadian Journal of Economics. Currently, he is an Associate editor for the Journal of Mathematical Economics. Professionally, Professor Deb is a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and an Associate of Theoretical Research in Development Economics (ThReD). In recognition of his contributions, he has received several honors and awards, among which are the Dean's Excellence Award from the University of Toronto in 2022 and the Excellence in Refereeing Award for AER: Insights in 2022.
c. Laura Doval
Professor Doval holds the prestigious position of Daniel W. Stanton Associate Professor of Business in the Economics Division at Columbia Business School. She is a microeconomic theorist working in the areas of game theory, mechanism design, and market design. In addition to her role at Columbia, Professor Doval serves as a Research Affiliate at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in the field of industrial organization. Her contributions to the field have been recognized through various editorial positions, including being an Associate Editor at Theoretical Economics, the Journal of the European Economic Association, and Economic Theory. She received her Ph.D. from Northwestern in 2016. Finally, in 2021, she was elected a Fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory.
13. Simonsen Lectures
a. Horacio Larreguy
He is an Associate Professor of Economics and Political Science at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City and Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST) and Toulouse School of Economics (TSE). Before, he was an Assistant and Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University between July 2013 and June 2021, and a Visiting Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST) and Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) between September 2020 and June 2022. He is an Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) affiliated professor and an Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) member. Native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, I received a PhD in Economics from MIT in 2013, a Master in Economics and Finance from CEMFI in 2007 and a BA in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires in 2004. His research interests include political economy and development economics using both theory and empirics. Broadly, He has been interested in political accountability and vote behavior in Africa and Latin America. In particular, He worked on clientelism and vote buying, the importance of information for political accountability, whether education fosters political participation, and whenever possible, the relevance of social networks for these and other development issues. More recently, motivated by the COVID-19 infodemic and rising political polarization, I am working on various projects on misinformation in Bolivia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, together with Africa Check, Chequea Bolivia, Kubatana, and Internews, and on polarization in Mexico and Turkey.
b. Rahul Deb
Professor Deb is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University and a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Professor Deb has held various positions at the University of Toronto, including Associate Professor and Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics. He has also been involved in editorial roles, having served as an Associate Editor for Theoretical Economics and as an Editorial Advisor for the Canadian Journal of Economics. Currently, he is an Associate editor for the Journal of Mathematical Economics. Professionally, Professor Deb is a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and an Associate of Theoretical Research in Development Economics (ThReD). In recognition of his contributions, he has received several honors and awards, among which are the Dean's Excellence Award from the University of Toronto in 2022 and the Excellence in Refereeing Award for AER: Insights in 2022.