People Type: Scholars

Amir Jina is an Assistant Professor at Harris Public Policy and an Affiliated Scholar at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC). Amir’s research in environmental and development economics focuses on the role of the environment in shaping how societies develop. This research combines economics with methods from climate science and remote sensing to understand the impacts of climate in both rich and poor countries, and has involved fieldwork related to climate change adaptation with communities in India, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Uganda.

Prior to University of Chicago, Amir was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, working on the economic analysis of the Risky Business initiative, an independent assessment of the economic risks posed by a changing climate in the US. Amir is a founding member of the Climate Impact Lab – an interdisciplinary collaboration examining the socioeconomic impacts of climate change around the world – and was also a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Economics Department of University of Chicago.

Amir received a Ph.D. in Sustainable Development and M.A. in Climate and Society both from Columbia University, B.A.s in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from Trinity College, Dublin, and previously worked with the Red Cross/Red Crescent in South Asia.

Koichiro Ito is a Professor at Harris School of Public Policy at University of Chicago. He received a BA from Kyoto University, an MA from University of British Columbia, and a PhD from UC Berkeley. Prior to joining University of Chicago, he was a SIEPR Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and an Assistant Professor at Boston University.

His research interests lie at the intersection of environmental and energy economics, industrial organization, and public economics. These include analyses of how consumers respond to nonlinear pricing, dynamic pricing, and rebate programs in electricity markets, how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation affects their economics decisions, how firms strategically react to attribute-based regulation such as fuel economy standards, how firms respond to dynamic incentives in sequential forward markets in wholesale electricity markets, and how much people in China value air quality. His research uses a variety of methods including randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental designs, and structural estimation to address policy relevant questions in energy and environmental economics.

He is a recipient of the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities and the Nikkei Prize for his book, The Power of Data Analysis: How to Approach Causality, published by Kobunsha in April 2017. The original book was published in Japanese and then has been translated to Korean and Taiwanees.

Professor Ito is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Faculty Affiliate at the E2e Project, a Faculty Fellow at Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a Fellow at the International Growth Centre, a Research Fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, and a Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Economics at Kyoto University.

Hortaçsu is the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor in Economics and the College. He has taught at the University of Chicago since 2001. He is Editor of the Journal of Political Economy. Hortaçsu’s research is on industrial organization; auctions; search and matching models; production and financial networks; applications in finance, energy markets and the internet.

Lars Peter Hansen is an internationally known leader in economic dynamics who works at the boundary of economics and statistics. He is a recipient of the 2013 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Hansen is recognized for making fundamental advances in our understanding of how economic agents cope with changing and risky environments. He has contributed to the development of statistical methods designed to explore the interconnections between macroeconomic indicators and assets in financial markets. These methods are widely used in empirical research in financial economics.

Hansen’s early research in econometrics was aimed at developing time series statistical methods to investigate one part of an economic model without having to fully specify and estimate all of the model ingredients.

The applications he explored with several coauthors such as Kenneth J. Singleton, Scott F. Richard, Robert Hodrick, and Ravi Jagannathan studied models of asset valuation, identifying and clarifying empirical puzzles where real-world financial and economic data were at odds with prevailing academic models.

Hansen’s recent work focuses on uncertainty and its relationship to long run risks in the macro economy. He explores how models that incorporate ambiguities, beliefs, and skepticism of consumers and investors can explain economic and financial data and reveal the long-term consequences of policy options. Hansen, Thomas J. Sargent, and coauthors have recently developed methods for modeling economic decision-making in environments in which uncertainty is hard to quantify. They explore the consequences for models with financial markets and characterize environments in which the beliefs of economic actors are fragile.

Currently, Hansen is co-principal investigator, along with Andrew Lo on a research initiative with the Macro Financial Modeling Group (MFM) that works to develop macroeconomic models with enhanced linkages to financial markets, with the aim of providing better policy tools for monitoring so-called systemic risks to the economy.

Before receiving the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, he received several other awards and honors. Hansen won the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Management “for making fundamental contributions to our understanding of how economic actors cope with risky and changing environments.” He also received the CME Group-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications in 2008 and the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics from Northwestern University in 2006.

Hansen is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Finance Association. He also is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and past president of the Econometric Society.
He delivered the Princeton Lectures in Finance at the Bendheim Center for Finance in December 2010, the Tjalling C. Koopmans Memorial Lectures at Yale in September 2008, and the Third Toulouse Lectures in Economics at the Université de Toulouse in May 2005.

Hansen joined the faculty of the University of Chicago’s Department of Economics in 1981 and has served as department chairman and director of graduate studies. He is now David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, Statistics, and the College. Hansen is the Director of the Becker Friedman Institute and chairs the Academic Research Council for that institute.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and political science from Utah State University and a doctorate in economics from the University of Minnesota. Hansen also received an honorary doctorate from Utah State University in 2012.

Eyal Frank is an assistant professor at the Harris School of Public Policy. As an environmental economist, he works at the intersection of ecology and economics. His work addresses three broad questions: (i) how do natural inputs, namely animals, contribute to different production functions of interest, (ii) how do market dynamics reduce natural habitats and lead to declining wildlife population levels, and (iii) what are the costs, indirect ones in particular, of conservation policies? In his work, Frank draws natural experiments from ecology and policy, and uses econometric techniques to estimate different pieces of the puzzle regarding the social cost of biodiversity losses. Prior to the University of Chicago, Frank was a postdoctoral research associate at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. in Sustainable Development from Columbia University, and his M.A. in Economics and B.Sc. in Environmental Sciences and Economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Fiona Burlig is an Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Deputy Faculty Director of EPIC-India, and technical advisor to the Odisha Data, Policy, and Innovation Centre (DPIC). She is an applied microeconomist with research interests in and at the intersection of energy, environmental, and resource economics and development economics. Her recent and ongoing research includes estimating the impact of rural electrification on economic development; studying the relationship between energy, groundwater, and crop choice; and measuring the economic consequences of long-range monsoon forecasts for farmers. Prior to joining Harris, she was a postdoc in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. She holds a PhD in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in economics, political science, and German from Williams College.