The Becker Friedman Institute has named four graduate students as Bradley Fellows in the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation’s Graduate and Post-Graduate Fellowship Program. The fellowships provide funding support to young scholars during a critical phase in their education, helping intelligent doctoral candidates and post-doctoral fellows to complete their studies, prepare manuscripts for publication, conduct research, and enhance their competitiveness in the job market.
These promising graduate fellows were recognized due to their academic excellence, within the foundation’s mission to strengthen intellectual infrastructure at the higher-education level. “These students are pursuing work today in areas that will form the bedrock of economic inquiry tomorrow,” says institute director Lars Peter Hansen.
The 2015–16 recipients include:
- Nathaniel Aaron Pancost, a fifth-year PhD candidate in the joint program in financial economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Department of Economics. His work attempts to explain the rapid growth of aggregate manufacturing labor productivity in India over the last two and half decades. In particular, he examines how much aggregate productivity growth can be attributed to improvements in financial institutions in India since 1990. Financial support provided by the Bradley Foundation will allow the fellow to deepen his empirical results.
- Gregory Buchak, a fourth-year JD/PhD candidate also in the joint program in financial economics. He seeks to understand how the financial system can impact real outcomes in the economy; his current project aims to quantify the impact of increased banking and lending competition on racial discrimination in the mortgage markets. His work indicates a role for both markets and government policy in addressing these important issues. Bradley Foundation funding will support Buchack as he pursues socially valuable areas of research.
- Douglas Xu, a third-year PhD candidate in the joint program in financial economics. He is active in research and teaching with interests in banking, market microstructure, and the linkages between the financial market and real economy. His most recent projects investigate the impact on underlying security markets of financial innovations such as exchange-traded funds. Bradley Foundation will aid Xu’s efforts to conduct empirical work and data collection.
- Robert Jackman, a third-year PhD candidate in the Department of Economics. He is interested in how the interaction of technological progress and free international trade will influence wages. His research aims to address global economic challenges in a technologically dynamic and open world. The fellowship will support the Jackman as he continues his work in this area.
—Mark Riechers