Meet our newest affiliates
Seven new affiliates recently joined J-PAL’s academic network: Wyatt Brooks at the University of Notre Dame, Greg Duncan at the University of California, Irvine, Thomas Fujiwara at Princeton University, Lisa Gennetian at New York University, David Molitor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, José Tessada at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and Christopher Walters at the University of California, Berkeley.
Their varied research interests span numerous topics, including trade and market access, child poverty, income security, representation in politics and the workplace, health and health care delivery, labor economics, household finance, and education. Learn more about their work below:
Wyatt Brooks is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame. He studies the effects of trade and market access within countries and across countries, as well as barriers to firm growth. In previous work he studied the effects of transportation infrastructure, and of information flows between microenterprises. He has conducted field work in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Nicaragua and Brazil. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2012.
Greg Duncan is a distinguished professor at the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He studies child poverty, focusing on understanding the relative importance of early academic skills, cognitive and emotional self-regulation, and health in promoting children’s eventual success in school and the labor market. He spent the first 25 years of his career at the University of Michigan working on, and ultimately directing, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data collection project. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1974.
Lisa Gennetian is a research professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. Her research spans multiple areas of U.S. poverty issues, including income security and stability, early care and education, and children’s development. In 2015 Lisa launched the beELL Initiative, applying insights from behavioral economics to design strategies to support parent engagement in, and enhance the impacts of, early childhood interventions. Prior to moving to academia in 2016 Lisa held positions at MDRC, the Brookings Institution, and Ideas42. Lisa earned her PhD in economics from Cornell.
Thomas Fujiwara is an associate professor of economics at Princeton University. His research is centered on political economy topics, with a particular focus on developing countries. In particular, his work aims to understand how political and social institutions shape individual behavior and influence representation in both elections and the workplace. He has conducted fieldwork in Benin, the Philippines, and the United States. He received his PhD from the University of British Columbia, Canada, and a B.A. and M.A. from the University of São Paulo, Brazil.
David Molitor is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research explores how location and the environment shape health and health care delivery. His recent work includes a large-scale field experiment of workplace wellness conducted at the University of Illinois. David received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012.
José Tessada is the chair of the Escuela de Administración (School of Business) and an associate professor of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His work has been published in academic journals and collected volumes. His main areas of research are labor economics; micro, small, and medium firms; and household finance. Prior to joining the Escuela de Administración, he worked at the Brookings Institution and was appointed a visiting assistant professor at the University of Maryland-College Park. He earned his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008.
Christopher Walters is an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His research covers topics in labor economics, education, and applied econometrics. His current work focuses on school choice, school effectiveness, and early childhood interventions, with evaluations conducted in Louisiana and Massachusetts. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2013.
