Faculty and Research Environment

Recognizing that a small department cannot cover all fields, Johns Hopkins has structured its department to have strong coverage in five areas: Applied Microeconomics, Economic Theory, Macroeconomics, Econometrics, and Finance. The department has three weekly seminars, one each in Applied Microeconomics, Economic Theory, and Macroeconomics, with econometrics covered in the first and third of these, and finance in the second and third. The seminars bring in top scholars from throughout the world to discuss their research and also provide a forum for faculty and students to present their recent research.

Applied Microeconomics Group

• Faculty - Mark Gersovitz, Caroline Fohlin, Yingyao Hu, Robert Moffitt, Stephen Shore, Tiemen Woutersen.
• Coverage includes Development, Industrial Organization, Labor Economics, and Microeconometrics.
• Adjunct Faculty - Burt Barnow (Institute of Policy Studies), David Bishai (Population and Family Health Sciences, Bloomberg School of Public Health), Kevin Frick (Department of Health Policy and Management, School of Public Health), Pravin Krishna (School of Advanced International Studies).

Economic Theory Group

• Faculty - Hülya Eraslan, Joe Harrington, Edi Karni, Ali Khan.
• Coverage includes Behavioral Economics, Game Theory, Industrial Organization, Mathematical Economics, Finance Theory, Political Economy, and Uncertainty.

Macroeconomics Group

• Faculty - Laurence Ball, Christopher Carroll, Jon Faust, Olivier Jeanne, Louis Maccini, Jonathan Wright
• Coverage includes Domestic Macroeconomics, International Finance, International Macroeconomics, Monetary Theory and Policy, and Time-Series Econometrics.

Econometrics Group

• Faculty - Jon Faust, Yingyao Hu, Tiemen Woutersen, Jonathan Wright
• Coverage includes microeconometric theory and applications, panel and cross-sectional techniques, nonparametrics, time-series methods, forecasting.

Finance Group

• Faculty - Greg Duffee, Hülya Eraslan, Jon Faust, Olivier Jeanne, Stephen Shore, Jonathan Wright
• Coverage includes topics in applied and theoretical finance: fixed income securities, corporate re-structuring, bankruptcy, sovereign lending, financial econometrics.
• Participate in the Financial Economics Undergraduate Minor Offered by the Center for Financial Economics

Ely Lecture- Since 1998, the department has funded The Richard Ely Distinguished Lecture Series. It brings in a highly distinguished scholar for about two weeks to give a series of lectures. Past speakers include Ken Binmore, Richard Blundell, David Laibson, James Heckman, Albert "Pete" Kyle, Blake LeBaron, Philippe Mongin, Adrian Pagan, and Ariel Pakes.

Hinkley Visiting Professor - This professorship rotates among departments in the College and allows us to bring in a top scholar from the current or former British Commonwealth (as specified by the original donor). Past visitors include Larry Epstein (1988-89), John Weymark (1992-93), Adrian Pagan (1996-97), Simon Grant (1999-2000) and Michael Devereux, University of British Columbia (2002-03), Richard Spady (Jan.2009-Jun.2009).

Faculty members hold positions on the editorial boards of many top journals including:

• American Economic Review
• Economics of Governance
• Games and Economic Behavior
• Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance
• International Finance
• Japanese Economic Review
• Journal of Business and Economic Statistics
• Journal of Development Economics
• Journal of Economic Integration
• Journal of Financial Econometrics
• Journal of Mathematical Economics
• Journal of Macroeconomics
• Journal of Population Economics
• Journal of Public Economic Theory
• Journal of Risk and Uncertainty
• Macroeconomic Dynamics
• Mathematical Social Sciences
• Mathematics of Operations Research
• Pacific Economic Review
• Pakistan Development Review
• RAND Journal of Economics
• Review of Development Economics
• Southern Economic Journal
• World Bank Economic Review

Grants - In recent years, faculty members have received numerous grants from various institutions including the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Sloan Foundation, and Russell Sage Foundation. Currently active grants include

"Innovation and Organizational Change in Venture Capital since World War II" - National Science Foundation

"Fighting Hard Core Cartels" - National Science Foundation

""Foundations of Bayesian Theory: Extensions and Applications" - National Science Foundation

"ADVANCE Fellows Award: Studies in Financial Institutions and Markets" - National Science Foundation

"Dynamic Game-Theoretic Models of Electric Power Markets and their Vulnerability" - National Science Foundation

"The Effect of Taxation on Labor Supply" - National Science Foundation

"The Effects of Antitrust Laws on Cartel Pricing" - National Science Foundation

"Empirical Analyses of Competitive Bidding" - National Science Foundation

"Foundations of Bayesian Theory" - National Science Foundation

"Social Influences on Smoking" - American Legacy Foundation

"Welfare Benefits and Family Structure: A Reconciliaton" - National Institutes of Health

"Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study" - National Institutes of Health

MERIT Award -- National Institutes of Health

Honors - Three faculty members are Fellows of the Econometric Society which is the premier society for economic theory and theoretical and applied econometrics (and a fourth, Carl Christ, remains in the Department as Professor Emeritus). Other notable positions and honors received by the faculty include:

National Bureau of Economic Research - Chairman of the Board, Co-Chair of NBER Research Group on Consumption, Co-organizer of the NBER Monetary Economics Meeting, Faculty Research Fellow, Research Associate.

National Associate, National Academy of Sciences

MERIT Award recipient from NIH.

Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Economics, University of Siena

Brookings Panel on Economic Activity - Member

Chicago-Northwestern Joint Center on Poverty Research, External Advisory Committee - Member and Senior Associate

Board of Directors, Population Association of America

Arne Ryde Memorial Lecturer

Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences - Member

Conference on Research on Income and Wealth - Member

ENCORE (The Netherlands) - Fellow

Social Science and Population Study Section, National Institutes of Health - Member

Economics Section, International Society for Inventory Research - Chairman

Recipient, Houblon-Norman Fellowship at the Bank of England

Recipient, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship

Paul A. Samuelson Award for Research on Lifetime Financial Security

Joint Faculty-Student Research - Perhaps it's because of the intimate size of the department. Or maybe it's the quality of our students or the regular interaction that takes place between faculty and students. Or possibly it's the water (which, quite honestly, is very good in Baltimore). But whatever the reason, there is a considerable amount of joint research between faculty and both current and former students. Some examples are:

Larry Ball is engaged in projects with Robert Tchaidze (Ph.D. '02) on monetary policy under Alan Greenspan and with Marc Hofstetter (current doctoral student) on unemployment in Latin America.

Chris Carroll has a paper with Wendy Dunn (Ph.D. '98) in the NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 1997 and they are now working on a project that examines the effectiveness of standard econometric tools for estimating consumption models using aggregate data. Chris also recently published "Learning About Consumption" in Macroeconomic Dynamics with Todd Allen (ABD).

Joe Harrington has in recent years published with Myong Chang (Ph.D. '89), Greg Hess (Ph.D. '90), Brock Blomberg (Ph.D. '93), Jeff Fischer (Ph.D. '93), and Shuichi Senbongi (Ph.D. '93) including a paper in the American Economic Review (June 2000). Joe also had an NSF grant with Myong Chang (Ph.D. '89) on the computational modelling of the interaction of organizational structure and market structure. They are currently working on a chapter for the second volume of the Handbook of Computational Economics.

Edi Karni and Henry Chiu (Ph.D. '94) have a paper in the Journal of Political Economy (1998) explaining the absence of private unemployment insurance. Edi is currently engaged in joint research with Tim Salmon (Ph.D. '99)and Barry Sopher of Rutgers on an experimental testing of fairness.

Ali Khan has been working with Kali Rath (Ph.D. '92) for several years on the existence of equilibrium in games. This has led to publications with Yeneng Sun in the Journal of Economic Theory (1997) and the Journal of Mathematical Economics (1999).

Lou Maccini has a paper on "Input and Output Inventories" coming out in the Journal of Monetary Economics with Brad Humphreys (Ph.D. '94) and Scott Schuh (Ph.D. '92).

Robert Moffitt worked with several doctoral students: Alena Bicakova on "Effect of Welfare Benefits on Family Structure: The Jackson-Klerman Study," Danny Gubits on "Effect of Welfare Benefits on Family Structure: The Hoynes Study," and Katie Winder on "Correlates and Consequences of Welfare Exit and Entry." Robert is also engaged in research with Chris Ruebeck (Ph.D. '00) and Joe Harrington in exploring how a person's handedness (whether they are left- or right-handed) relates to their performance in the labor market.