THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Areas of Research
Applied Microeconomics
Applied microeconomics at Chicago uses price theory and other theoretical economic tools and empirical analysis to explain real world problems, including the effects of different public policies. This tradition at Chicago dates back to Jacob Viner and Frank Knight, and continued with Nobel Prize winners Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Theodore Schultz, Ronald Coase, Gary Becker, James Heckman, and Robert Fogel.
Chicago research in applied microeconomics has made important contributions to understanding problems in industrial organization, informational economics, human capital and other aspects of labor economics, agricultural economics and economic development, law and economics, including the Coase theorem, the economics of slavery, choice under uncertainty, and many other important issues.
Current research is analyzing environmental and energy economics, returns to education, crime, use of illegal drugs, the value of life, and investments in health, marriage and divorce, including the effects on labor markets, demand for insurance, the structure of industries, and many other topics. Much of this research is built around workshops that have heavy student and faculty participation. These workshops, as well as the whole program, treat economics as a powerful analytical tool for understanding real world economies. Students at Chicago learn the power and scope of economic analysis, and this understanding is clearly manifested in the nature and quality of their dissertations.
Faculty working in Applied Microeconomics:
Stéphane Bonhomme
David Galenson
James J. Heckman
Ali Hortaçsu
Greg Kaplan
Steven Levitt
Kevin Murphy
Evan Rose
Development Economics
Faculty Working in Development Economics:
Econometrics
Chicago has a rich tradition in empirical research guided by economics and statistical theory. Henry Schultz, a founder of the Econometric Society, did pioneering work on the theory and measurement of consumer demand in the 1920’s and 30’s. Paul Douglas developed the Cobb-Douglas production function to explain features of US data while working at Chicago in the 20’s through the 40’s. The Cowles Commission was active at Chicago in the 40’s and 50’s and developed pioneering methodology for the study of causality and simultaneity that is the foundation of modern econometrics. Trygve Haavelmo’s Nobel-Prize winning work on the probability approach in econometrics united modern statistics with econometrics. Klein’s work on business cycles, and Marschak’s work on stochastic choice and on policy evaluation were also done here under the auspices of the Cowles Commission. This tradition has been continued by later scholars like Zvi Griliches, Marc Nerlove, and Arnold Zellner.
More recently Lars Hansen and James Heckman have continued this tradition of uniting economics, empirical analysis and statistics in studying economic problems. Hansen’s pioneering work on the formulation and estimation of dynamic rational expectations models, on the measurement of risk aversion and intertemporal substitution, and on the econometrics of asset pricing have broken new ground. He developed GMM, the most-used estimation method in modern econometrics. Heckman has developed new methods in microeconometrics to control for selection and measure heterogeneity in micro and macro models. His work is widely used in the econometric evaluation of social programs, in measuring inequality, and in the study of the economics of the life cycle. At Chicago, econometrics is not an abstract game. Our research is guided by the application of theory to the interpretation of evidence. Chicago economists address real problems and develop the tools needed to address them.
Faculty working in Econometrics:
Stéphane Bonhomme
Lars Peter Hansen
Jim Heckman
Kirill Ponomarev
Azeem Shaikh
Max Tabord-Meehan
Alex Torgovitsky
Economic Theory
Economic theory at the University of Chicago encompasses a large number of areas, including game theory, auction and mechanism design, economics of information and uncertainty, and general equilibrium theory, including dynamical models of growth and equilibrium. In each of these important areas, faculty in the department have made leading contributions. The department is committed to the view that economic theory is central to all of economics, and that the best theoretical work should both respond to and inform current work on applied problems. In the Chicago tradition, economic theory is serious business.
Faculty working in Economic Theory:
Ben Brooks
Roger B. Myerson
Doron Ravid
Philip J. Reny
Joseph Root
Nancy Stokey
Environmental/Energy
Finding ways to supply the reliable, affordable energy needed to foster economic growth while averting climate change and damages to our health and environment is one of the most important challenges the world faces. The University’s environmental and energy research tackles this global energy challenge through three main research themes: energy markets (including renewable energy, fossil fuels, electric power, transportation, and energy efficiency); the environment (including air pollution, environmental health and conservation economics); and climate change (including climate economics, climate law and policy and climate science). In collaboration with the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), this research combines the insights of Chicago economists with policy analysts from the Harris School of Public Policy, business experts from the Booth School of Business, legal scholars and practitioners from the Law School, and engineers and scientists from throughout the University to uncover the true costs of the world’s energy choices.
Faculty Working in Environmental/Energy:
Michael Greenstone
Esteban Rossi-Hansberg
Experimental/Behavioral Economics
Experimental and behavioral economics at the University of Chicago extends the scope of economic research to study people's behavior in real world settings. Employing rigorous experimental methods allows researchers to identify causal effects, providing a robust foundation for understanding the mechanisms behind human behavior and offering actionable insights for policymakers and practitioners. Behavioral economics provides valuable insights into understanding humans’ actual behavior, in contrast to predictions grounded in the assumption that people behave rationally. University of Chicago scholars have been instrumental in making significant contributions to this interdisciplinary field. Their research has real-world impact, with applications spanning political economy, education, philanthropy, environment, development, labor markets, finance, and more.
Faculty Working in Experimental/Behavioral Economics:
IO
Faculty Working in IO:
Labor Economics
Labor economics at the University of Chicago involves the study of models of the allocation of labor to different employments as well as the distributions of wages and earnings that accompany these allocations. Courses explore how discrimination may impact these allocations as well as racial and gender differences in the distributions of earnings and wages. Courses in the labor sequence not only develop these models but also explore the econometric methods used to evaluate them. The courses stress the importance of human capital models that explore how investments in the productive capacities of children, youth, and adults impact distributions of productivity and earnings. The courses also stress the idea that labor markets are assignment mechanisms that match workers who possess different skills to employers who have heterogeneous demands for different skills. Finally, students will learn how agency theory informs personnel policies, and how firms address the problems of hidden action and hidden information among their workers.
Faculty Working in Labor Economics:
Christina Brown
Manasi Deshpande
Thibaut Lamadon
Magne Mogstad
Derek A. Neal
Evan Rose
Macro/Finance
Macroeconomic research at Chicago is involved with the traditional subjects of business cycles, unemployment, inflation, and the design of monetary and fiscal policies. It has also come to include the study of economic growth and development, aspects of international trade theory, financial economics, the analysis of social insurance programs, and the study of the political determinants of macroeconomic policies.
A rigorous three-course sequence in the first year, along with a complementary course in time-series econometrics, provides basic technical background and a survey of substantive research in the area. Advanced courses, depending on the research interests of faculty and students, examine issues on current research frontiers, and suggest thesis topics. Interested students and faculty discuss new research at the Money and Banking Workshop, founded by Milton Friedman in the 1950s, at the Macro/International Workshop in the Graduate School of Business, and at more specialized bag lunches and reading groups.
Faculty working in Macroeconomics:
Ufuk Akcigit
Fernando Alvarez
Mikhail Golosov
Lars Peter Hansen
Greg Kaplan
Esteban Rossi-Hansberg
Robert Shimer
Nancy Stokey
Harald Uhlig
Public Economics
Public economics at the University of Chicago combines new developments in the theory of optimal taxation and regulation with empirical research employing frontier methods and novel data sources. Following the long tradition of the University of Chicago, the theory of public economics responds to and informs applied work, and applied work in public economics is motivated by theory while also speaking to public policy problems.
Faculty Working in Public Economics:
Manasi Deshpande
Mikhail Golosov
Michael Greenstone
Magne Mogstad
Casey Mulligan
Evan Rose
Theory
Trade/Spatial Economics
The trade and spatial economics field at the University of Chicago encompasses the study of the distribution of economic activity in space and the various ways in which individuals and firms interact across locations. As such, it includes the study of trade flows across and within countries, migration and the spatial sorting of individuals, the location decision of firms and their plants and their strategy to serve customers and source inputs across countries and regions, the structure of cities and the resulting commuting flows and agglomeration and congestion forces. The field also studies the aggregate and dynamic growth implications of the spatial distribution of economic activity and the resulting flows and interactions across space. Faculty in the department have made core contributions in all these areas.
A second-year Ph.D. sequence in the field provides training in all these topics. Faculty in the economics department, complemented by faculty at Chicago Booth School of Business, run a student workshop, the “Trade and Spatial Afternoons” seminar series, and they co-organize talks in the field at other seminars around Chicago. The International Economics and Economic Geography initiative at the Becker-Friedman Institute provides research support and organizes several yearly conferences on these topics.
Faculty Working in Trade/Spatial Economics: