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Home > Graduate > Fields of Study

Fields of Study

Development Economics

Northwestern has a fast-growing, dynamic group of faculty working in the area of economic development. Development economics increasingly emphasizes research that integrates cutting-edge theory and first-rate empirical work, and Northwestern's development community benefits from interaction with the theory, econometrics, and labor groups within the department, as well as the Mathematical Economics and Decision Sciences, Finance and Management and Strategy groups within the Kellogg School of Management, and the labor and education economists in the School of Education. The department has a weekly Applied Microeconomics seminar and additionally, development faculty and students often attend seminars held by the Institute for Policy Research (IPR), and other departmental field seminars such as theory, macroeconomics, and econometrics.

Within the economics department, Northwestern's development faculty includes affiliates of major research organizations such as the National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER) and Centre for Economic Policy Research, as well as leading development organizations including the Bureau for Research and Economics Analysis of Development (BREAD), Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), and the International Growth Centre.

In an exciting development, 2011 saw the creation of the Northwestern Center for the Study of Development Economics, a research center based in the economics department and dedicated to top-quality empirical development research. The Center for International Macroeconomics (CIM), a joint venture of the Economics Department and Kellogg School of Management's finance group, also funds research in development economics. These affiliations and resources put Northwestern's faculty at the heart of field-based data collection, including surveys, field experiments, and field-based lab experiments. A unifying theme of the Northwestern faculty's development research is a desire to use innovative data and empirical methods to test and inform economic theory.

Econometrics

Northwestern Economics has a high-profile Econometrics group that includes five research-active professors. Our Econometrics group is especially known for an approach to inference that emphasizes minimal plausible assumptions and robustness. This approach focuses on the roles various assumptions play in shaping the conclusions that can be drawn from data about features of interest in a given model. This approach has greatly influenced both econometric theory and the conduct of empirical work in economics.

Our faculty is currently involved in research projects on identification analysis, statistical decision theory, inference in nonparametric instrumental variable models, learning from data in models with strategic interactions and social interactions, and inference with moment inequalities. In addition, affiliated faculty in the Economics Department and at the Kellogg School of Management work on areas related to inference in dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) macroeconomic models, and empirical models of finance and asset pricing.

The Center for Econometrics supports econometrics research at Northwestern. In addition to funding graduate students interested in econometrics, the Center sponsors a series of external visitors who spend a week in the department, interacting with faculty and students. Our group also holds at least one conference per year on topics of interest. We also offer a lively weekly econometrics seminar, which features external speakers. In addition, we have a weekly student-run lunch seminar where students present their papers or work-in-progress. All these activities provide our student with a unique exposure to cutting-edge research.

For students interested in Econometrics, Northwestern offers one of the most supportive and nurturing environments anywhere - an environment that allows them to excel. This is manifested in outstanding placement outcomes. Many of our students have gone on to tenured or tenured track positions at top departments, including top-five economics departments.

Economic History

Economic history at Northwestern has a tradition that now dates back more than half a century, to the first years of the "cliometric revolution" that altered the field by combining conventional historical analyses of economic activity with both theoretical rigor and quantitative sophistication. For Ph.D. students interested in economic history as either their primary field or in combination with other fields, Northwestern's faculty, course offerings, and regular seminar series provide a unique preparation for research and teaching in this field. Only a small number of other elite economics departments have similar strength.

The economic history faculty at Northwestern includes a past president of the Economic History Association, and editor of the Journal of Economic History. Other Northwestern economic history faculty members include present or recent members of the editorial boards of all the leading economic history journals, the leading book series in economic history and all of them keep up high-visibility research profiles.

Northwestern currently has two full-time senior faculty members in the economics department specializing in economic history (both with joint appointments in Northwestern's History Department) and one full-time tenured faculty member in the History Department.

Northwestern offers a weekly economic history seminar, heavily attended by faculty and graduate students. In fact, the economic history seminar is the department's longest continuously-operating seminar, having been a staple of the department's diverse workshop schedule since the 1960s. The seminar meets 23 times each year, exposing faculty and students to the current research of scholars from throughout the world and providing students an opportunity to present their own research. The number of meetings and level of student and faculty involvement in the seminar are unequaled.

The placement record of Northwestern economic history students, which includes students who have gone on to tenured or tenure-track positions at top-five economics departments, demonstrates the value that the economics discipline has placed on the experience enjoyed by our students, many of whom came to Northwestern specifically to study economic history.

Industrial Organization

Northwestern has an impressive presence in the field of Industrial Organization (IO), offering one of the best and largest IO groups in the world. Indeed, we are currently ranked #2 among graduate IO programs by U.S. News and World Report. Graduate students at Northwestern University specializing in IO interact with a remarkably large and diverse set of faculty, whose research interests span an incredibly wide array of areas in IO. They also have access to the unique resources of the Center for the Study of Industrial Organization (CSIO).

The IO community at Northwestern is large, strong, and vibrant. Currently there are five faculty members in the Department working mainly in IO, and many more working on IO-related topics. Several IO faculty members are or were in the past, on the editorial boards of numerous top IO journals including the Review of Economic Studies, the RAND Journal of Economics, the Journal of Industrial Economics and the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics.

The breadth of IO expertise available to students is expanded by our cooperation with the Kellogg School of Management faculty, with whom we share a building. Currently there are at least seven Kellogg faculty members working mainly in IO with many more working in related areas including economic theory, strategy, organizations, marketing, finance and health economics. Our students regularly take Kellogg Ph.D. classes and many have Kellogg faculty on their dissertation committees.

IO faculty members are heavily involved in advising graduate students. This is reflected in superb placement over the past 20 years. Placements in the last six years include Stanford University, The University of California at Berkeley, New York University's Stern School of Business, the University of Pennsylvania, Duke University and University College London.

Dissertation-oriented training starts very early at Northwestern through mentoring and advising, which includes a third-year informal meeting group (for students interested in IO related areas), followed by student lunch presentations (typically for fourth-year students).

The Center for the Study of Industrial Organization provides funding for research assistantships, travel, and data sets, as well as a visitor program that regularly brings to campus the top IO researchers in the world. These visits, which range from week-long to year-long stays, provide faculty and students additional exposure to cutting edge research done elsewhere.

Macroeconomics

Macroeconomic research conducted at Northwestern has laid the foundations for entire areas of current investigation. The article "Nominal Rigidities and the Dynamic Effects of a Shock to Monetary Policy" (Journal of Political Economy 2005) by Charles Evans and faculty members Lawrence Christiano and Martin Eichenbaum is currently the most-cited paper in economics in the past decade, and provides the benchmark for current monetary dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) modeling at academic departments and central banks around the world. In the intersection of macroeconomics and labor economics, the dominant theoretical framework is the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides matching model, a contribution for which faculty member Dale Mortensen was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics.

Northwestern also provides leadership in economic growth and development, international trade, and the macro-political economy.

The recent financial crisis and "Great Recession" have moved research questions at the intersection of macroeconomics and finance to the forefront. Economists at Northwestern are uniquely placed to make progress on these issues due to the close integration with the finance group in Kellogg School of Management. Many faculty members and graduate students from both economics and finance are working in this area, and a number of graduate students draw advisors from both groups.

The macroeconomics group offers two weekly seminars: The Macroeconomics Workshop, features external speakers, and the Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar is devoted to graduate student presentations. Both are regularly attended by macroeconomics and finance faculty. There is also a macroeconomics reading group and additional seminars organized by the Kellogg Finance Department.

Macroeconomics faculty work closely with researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The Federal Reserve Bank also organizes numerous conferences including annual meetings by the macro and monetary groups of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

The Center for International Macroeconomics financially supports macroeconomic research in the department, provides funding for long-term visitors, and organizes conferences. The Center also organizes the annual Advanced Workshop for Central Bankers, which deepens the connection from research to policy-making in the monetary arena.

Microeconomic Theory

Northwestern has a history as a breeding ground for many of the important advances in modern microeconomic theory. That tradition continues today. For Ph.D. applicants interested in economic theory, Northwestern University provides a uniquely stimulating, unparalleled learning and research environment.

The theory faculty at Northwestern includes four members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and at least eight fellows of the Econometric Society. Northwestern theory faculty are also currently members of the editorial boards of all the leading theory journals, as well as most general-interest journals. There are more theory associate editors on the board of Econometrica from Northwestern than from any other university. A former editor of Econometrica and the editor of Games and Economic Behavior are also on the Northwestern faculty.

The Northwestern theory community comprises a larger theory faculty and more theory courses than anywhere else in the world. Furthermore, there is close interaction with students and faculty in the Kellogg School of Management. Theory students interested in political economy, finance, and strategy regularly interact with Kellogg faculty in those fields on a regular basis; joint thesis committees are common.

Northwestern offers two weekly theory seminars: the Theory Workshop, which features external speakers, and the Theory Brown-Bag Lunch, which showcases current research by Northwestern faculty. No other department anywhere provides students with a comparable exposure to cutting-edge research in economic theory.

The Center for Economic Theory hosts scholars from other institutions, and encourages their interaction with our faculty and students. It also provides targeted financial support for theory students. Finally, the Center sponsors a monthly seminar where theory students present their work-in-progress to an audience of faculty and peers.

The placement record of Northwestern theory students - a record that we are very proud of - is a testament to the enthusiasm and dedication that characterizes the Northwestern theory faculty throughout the mentoring and advising process. Theory placements in the last seven years include The California Institute of Technology, University of Chicago, Harvard University, University of Minnesota, and Stanford University in the United States, and Oxford University and teh University of Toulouse in Europe.