People Type: Scholars

Weisbach is primarily interested in issues relating to federal taxation and to climate change. In addition to his position at the University of Chicago Law School, he is also a Senior Fellow at the Computation Institute and Argonne National Laboratories and an International Research Fellow at the Said School of Business, Oxford University.Weisbach serves in a consultant role for the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform and on the Academic Advisory Panel for the Joint Committee on Taxation Simplification Study.

Weisbach joined the Chicago faculty in 1998. Prior to that, he was an Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown Law Center. Before teaching, Weisbach worked at the Department of Treasury was an attorney-advisor in the Office of the Tax Legislative Counsel and, subsequently, as associate tax legislative counsel. After graduating from law school, Weisbach clerked for Judge Joel M. Flaum of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and worked as an associate in the law firm of Miller & Chevalier.

Weisbach received his BS in Mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1985; a Masters in Advance Study (Mathematics) from Wolfson College, Cambridge in 1986; and a JD from Harvard Law School in 1989.

Shaoda Wang is an applied economist with research interests in development economics, environmental economics, and political economy. His main research agenda aims at understanding the political economy of public policy (design, implementation, effectiveness), with a regional focus on China.

He holds a BA from Peking University and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining Harris, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Economics and Energy Policy Institute (EPIC) at the University of Chicago.

Matthew Tirrell is the founding Pritzker Director of the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, and a Senior Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. He specializes in polymer surface properties, adsorption, adhesion, surface treatment, friction, lubrication, biocompatibility and self-assembly.

Tirrell’s honors include membership in the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the Indian National Academy of Engineering. He also has been a Sloan and a Guggenheim Fellow, a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society.

In 2009, Prof. Tirrell became the Arnold and Barbara Silverman Professor and Chair of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, with additional appointments in chemical engineering and materials science & engineering, and as a Faculty Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He served in these capacities until taking his current appointment in 2011.

From 1977 to 1999, Tirrell was a member of the Chemical Engineering and Materials Science faculty at the University of Minnesota, where he served as department head from 1995 to 1999. From 1999 to 2009, Tirrell was Dean of Engineering and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Tirrell has co-authored approximately 300 papers and one book during his career. He has supervised approximately 80 Ph.D. students and 40 postdocs.

From the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Prof. Tirrell has received the Allan P. Colburn Award, the Charles Stine Award, the William H. Walker Award, and the Professional Progress Awards. He was the Institute Lecturer in 2001.

Additionally, Tirrell has served as a member of the Boards of Directors of the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital System and of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.

Tirrell received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in 1977 in Polymer Science from the University of Massachusetts.

Mark N. Templeton is Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. Immediately prior, Templeton served as Executive Director of the Office of Independent Trustees for the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust. In this role, Templeton helped to ensure that the $20 billion pledged by BP is available to address the claims of those affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Previously, Templeton served in the cabinet of Missouri Governor Jay Nixon as Director of the Department of Natural Resources, leading the State’s efforts in energy, environmental protection, state parks, and water resources. He managed approximately 1750 FTEs, oversaw a $310 million annual budget, and directed an additional $350 million of one-time American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.

From 2005 to 2009, Templeton served as Associate Dean and COO at Yale Law School. From 2001 to 2005, he developed environmental and sustainability strategies at McKinsey & Company, among other projects. Prior to joining McKinsey, Templeton was special assistant and senior adviser to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and an adviser to the U.S. Delegation to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. He was a Financial Analyst at Goldman Sachs from 1994 to 1996. Templeton earned a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, in social studies from Harvard College in 1994 and a JD from Yale Law School in 1999.

Esteban Rossi-Hansberg is the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor in the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics at the University of Chicago (since 2021). Previously, he was the Theodore A. Wells ’29 Professor of Economics at Princeton University. Prior to Princeton, he was an Assistant Professor at Stanford University. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2002.

His research specializes in international trade, regional and urban economics, as well as growth and organizational economics. He has published extensively in all the major journals in economics. In 2007, he received the prestigious Alfred Sloan Research Fellowship and in 2010, he received the August Lösch Prize and the Geoffrey Hewings Award. He is an elected fellow of the Econometric Society since 2017 and won the Robert E. Lucas Jr. Prize in 2019.

John List is the Homer J. Livingston Professor and Chairman in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. He also holds a position as a National Bureau of Economic Research Associate. John has previously served as a Senior Economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (2002-2004).

John has pioneered field experiments as a methodology for learning about behavioral principles that are shared across different domains. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed research publications, providing insights into charitable giving, public goods provision, and valuation of non-marketed goods and services. John received the 2010 Kenneth Galbraith Award and the 2008 Arrow Prize for Senior Economists for his research in behavioral economics in the field. Overall, data John has collected has provided insights into incentives for education, pricing behavior, discrimination in the marketplace, the valuation of non-marketed goods and services, public goods provision, and importantly, charitable giving.

As the PI of SPI, John plans to lead the team in generating knowledge in the field of philanthropy and bridging the gap between research and practice by forming collaborative partnerships. John’s research on philanthropy has been showcased in various media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Chronicle of Philanthropy, and the New York Times.

Christian Leuz is the Charles F. Pohl Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting and Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research and Leibniz Institute SAFE, a Fellow at the European Corporate Governance Institute, Goethe Universität Frankfurt’s Center for Financial Studies, and the CESifo Research Network. He is a co-organizer and a member of the IGM’s European Economic Experts Panel. He studies the role of disclosure and transparency in capital markets and other settings; the economic effects of regulation; international accounting; corporate governance and corporate financing. His work has been published in many top academic journals including Science, Journal of Finance, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Accounting & Economics, and Review of Financial Studies. He has received several awards and honors, including the 2016 and the 2014 Distinguished Contribution to the Accounting Literature Awards, a Humboldt Research Award in 2012, as well as the 2011 Wildman Medal Award. He is recognized as a “Highly Cited Researcher” by Thomson Reuters and was included in their list of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” five years in a row (from 2014 to 2018). Professor Leuz is an editor for the Journal of Accounting Research and has served on many editorial boards, including the Journal of Accounting & Economics, The Accounting Review, the Journal of Business, Finance and Accounting, and the Review of Accounting Studies.

Born in Germany, Professor Leuz earned his doctoral degree and Habilitation at the Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany. Prior to this position, he was the Harold Stott Term Assistant Professor in Accounting at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting doctoral fellow at the Simon School of Business, University of Rochester.

Hyuk-soo Kwon is an Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy. His research interests lie at the intersection of Empirical Industrial Organization and Environment and Energy Economics. His studies focus on designing policies to correct environmental externalities in the presence of inefficiencies such as imperfect competition, market frictions, and political constraints. He has a particular interest in the role of government incentives in the electric vehicle and battery industry. Prior to joining Harris, Hyuk-soo was a Postdoctoral researcher at the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University in 2023 and his MA and BA in economics from Seoul National University.

Hajin Kim is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Law School. She uses principles from social psychology and economics to study how moral and social influence can shape environmental regulation and firm behavior. Hajin received her BA in economics, summa cum laude, from Harvard, her JD from Stanford Law School, and her PhD from Stanford’s Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources. Before attending Stanford, Hajin worked for the Boston Consulting Group. She clerked for Judge Paul Watford of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the US Supreme Court.

Ryan Kellogg is a professor and deputy dean for academic programs at the Harris School of Public Policy, and is a Research Associate at the National Bureau for Economic Research. Ryan’s research bridges industrial organization, energy economics, and environmental policy, focusing on the economics of resource extraction and on the transportation sector. Ryan’s publications examine topics such as the response of investment to uncertainty, the economic consequences of the shale gas boom, the effectiveness of policies to reduce emissions from the transportation sector, factors affecting households’ vehicle demand, and the nature of firms’ and households’ beliefs about future oil and refined product prices. In ongoing work, Ryan is studying the economics of private mineral leases for shale gas and the economics of fuel economy standards when future gasoline prices are uncertain.

Ryan earned a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008. Prior to his graduate studies, Ryan worked for BP in Houston, TX and Anchorage, AK for four years as an engineer and economic analyst. Ryan earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and a B.A. in Economics from Rice University in 1999. He grew up outside of Cleveland, OH.