EGC welcomes new affiliates and visiting scholars

Gerald Jaynes is the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of Economics, African American Studies, and Urban Studies at Yale. As an affiliate, he is engaging with EGC on common areas of interest in economic and social justice issues and economic history. This fall Prof. Jaynes is co-organizing the Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Economic Justice Virtual Symposium at EGC with Rohini Pande.

Tony Smith is the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Economics and Chair of the Department of Economics at Yale. As an affiliate, his research on the macroeconomics of climate change deepens EGC’s engagement with environmental policy that affects high- and low-income countries alike.

Diana Van Patten joins Yale School of Management as Assistant Professor of Economics – and EGC as an affiliate – this fall. Her research focuses on trade, development, and economic history. An EGC Affiliate Spotlight article explores her research on how foreign firms have complex, long-term impacts on the living standards, politics, and environment of developing countries like Costa Rica.

The EGC has a unique research community with diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise, and I am excited to be part of it. – Diana Van Patten

Visiting Scholars

Throughout its 60-year history, EGC has welcomed visitors from around the goal to teach, participate in workshops and events, and immerse themselves in the EGC research community. The visiting scholars for the 2021-22 academic year reflect the wide range of research that the Center supports.

Ceren Baysan is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Essex and an affiliate of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). She will be a Visiting Scholar at EGC and the Jackson Institute for International Affairs during the 2021-22 academic year, during which she will be teaching the course “Approaches to International Development” in the spring, as well as continuing her research.

Yale is a great hub for research on development economics and political economy. Interacting with people from EGC – whether in the hallways, at lunch, or in the workshops – will allow me to generate new ideas, refine my current research, and learn how to connect research to policy. I am also excited to meet the students. Engaging with younger people is really important for learning how they see the problems you are working on. – Ceren Baysan

Maggie E.C. Jones is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Her research areas include labour, education, and history, and she uses tools from these disciplines to better understand the persistence of socioeconomic inequalities between groups with a particular focus on skill accumulation and discrimination.

While at the EGC I will be focusing on two areas of research that study discrimination in a historical context.  The first area builds on my existing work studying the economics of segregation in public accommodations prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The second focuses on historical policies that have impacted Indigenous communities in North America, including the impact of treaties and Christian missions on economic development on reservations.  I believe that we cannot begin to understand contemporary differences in economic outcomes until we have a complete understanding of the historical processes that have shaped these outcomes.  I am excited for the opportunity to spend time at the EGC and look forward to learning from the combined insights of the economic history and economic development groups. – Maggie E.C. Jones

Yusuf Neggers is an Assistant Professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and joins EGC and the MacMillan Center as an Associated Research Scholar during the 2021-22 Academic Year. His research examines questions at the intersection of political economy and economic development, with a focus on state capacity and the delivery of public services.

I’ll be spending much of my time this academic year working on research related to bureaucracy, public service delivery, and elections in India. As an EGC affiliate, I’m excited to be a part of the development and broader economics communities here at Yale. – Yusuf Neggers

Swapnil Singh joins us as a Visiting Fellow from the Bank of Lithuania. His research areas are quantitative macroeconomics and development. While at Yale, he will be working with Professor Kaivan Munshi on female labor force participation in India and the opioid epidemic in the United States. 

The leadership and staff of the Economic Growth Center is proud to welcome this unusually large and diverse set of economists to the network, and look forward to working with them over the coming year.