Pre-Doctoral Research Opportunities

The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) is seeking to hire a full-time Research Professional to work with Professors Ali Hortacsu and Chad Syverson as part of BFI’s Industrial Organization Initiative and BFI’s Predoctoral Research in Economics Program (PREP). The BFI IO initiative sponsors projects in all areas connected to the economics of industry. Research professionals work closely with faculty on project areas including but not limited to theoretical and empirical work on strategic firm interactions, estimation of demand and production functions, advertising and information asymmetries, regulations and their impact on firm performance and broader economic outcomes, the design of market mechanisms for private and public sector applications. Requirements: mastery of undergraduate econometrics and statistics, and proficiency in R/Python/Stata and robust software development practices.

The program is intended to serve as a bridge between college and graduate school for students interested in empirical economics. Applicants must have completed a Bachelors degree by June 2021 and have strong quantitative and programming skills. Candidates with research experience are strongly preferred, especially those with experience in Stata, R, Python or Matlab. The ideal candidate would begin on July 1, 2021 and work for BFI for one or two years before applying to graduate school in Economics or another quantitative social science. BFI offers competitive salary and employee benefits.

The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) is seeking to hire a full-time Research Professional to work with Professors Azeem Shaikh and Max Tabord-Meehan and possibly other faculty as part of BFI’s Big Data Initiative and BFI’s Predoctoral Research in Economics Program (PREP). Successful applicants will collaborate on new and ongoing research in econometric theory.  The position will likely involve programming novel statistical procedures and conducting simulation experiments, as well as reading, understanding and summarizing current methodological papers in economics and statistics.

The program is intended to serve as a bridge between college and graduate school for students interested in empirical economics. Applicants must have completed a Bachelors degree by June 2021 and have strong quantitative and programming skills. Candidates with research experience are strongly preferred, especially those with experience in Stata, R, Python or Matlab. The ideal candidate would begin on July 1, 2021 and work for BFI for one or two years before applying to graduate school in Economics or another quantitative social science. BFI offers competitive salary and employee benefits.

The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) is seeking to hire a full-time Research Professional to work with Oeindrila Dube, Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy. Successful candidates will work directly with Professor Dube and co-authors as a part of  BFI’s Initiative for the Study of Gender in the Economy and BFI’s Predoctoral Research in Economics Program (PREP).  Professor Dube does empirical research at the intersection of development economics and political economy. The position entails collaboration on new and ongoing research on the topics of media markets, gender equity, female labor market participation, and links between poverty and violent conflict in regions such as the Middle East and Africa.  Part of the job entails working with big datasets, e.g., terabytes of digital trace data. This is a unique opportunity to learn how to work with such data.

The program is intended to serve as a bridge between college and graduate school for students interested in empirical economics. Applicants must have completed a Bachelors degree by June 2021 and have strong quantitative and programming skills. Candidates with research experience are strongly preferred, especially those with experience in Stata, R, Python or Matlab. The ideal candidate would begin on July 1, 2021 and work for BFI for one or two years before applying to graduate school in Economics or another quantitative social science. BFI offers competitive salary and employee benefits.

The Becker Friedman Institute is seeking a Research Professional (RP) to work on new and ongoing research projects in and related to international economics and related fields, including economic geography and urban economics. The Research Professional will work under the guidance of Professors Jonathan Dingel and Felix Tintelnot. Their recent research is available at www.jdingel.com and felix-tintelnot.wikidot.com.

The Research Professional will be involved at all stages of Professor Dingel and Tintelnot’s research projects, from initial data exploration to reporting conclusions. Typical responsibilities include collecting, manipulating, and analyzing large datasets, programming statistical simulations, producing visualizations, and reporting results. These functions are often executed using parallel processing on the University’s high-performance computing clusters. The RP will also help design and proofread reports and presentations related to these research projects. The RP will collaborate with Dingel, Tintelnot, their coauthors, PhD students, and other RPs involved in this work at Chicago and other universities.

This position is ideal for individuals considering attending graduate school in economics and related fields. Prior RPs have become Economics PhD students at Berkeley, Chicago, Princeton, Stanford, and similar schools. Research staff build relationships and gain valuable experience as part of UChicago’s rigorous intellectual environment. RPs are encouraged to attend a weekly seminar related to their own research interests.

The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) is seeking to hire a full-time Research Professional to work with Joshua Gottlieb, Associate Professor, Harris Public Policy; Deputy Director of BFI Health Economics Initiative on ongoing and new research projects related to research in health and labor economics, including the complexity of health insurance policies, healthcare paperwork, physician behavior, and healthcare labor markets. Applicants must be available to begin work in July 2021.

Successful candidates will work directly with Professor Gottlieb and co-authors as part of BFI’s Predoctoral Research in Economics Program (PREP). The program is intended to serve as a bridge between college and graduate school for students interested in empirical economics. Applicants must have completed a Bachelors degree by June 2021 and have strong quantitative and programming skills. Candidates with research experience are strongly preferred, especially those with experience in Stata, R, Python or Matlab. The ideal candidate would begin on July 1, 2021 and work for BFI for one or two years before applying to graduate school in Economics or another quantitative social science. BFI offers competitive salary and employee benefits.

The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) is seeking to hire a full-time Research Professional to work with Manasi Deshpande, Assistant Professor of Economics. Successful candidates will work directly with Professor Deshpande as part of BFI’s Ronzetti Initiative for the Study of Labor Markets and BFI’s Predoctoral Research in Economics Program (PREP). Manasi Deshpande does empirical research on social safety net programs. Her research uses a combination of large administrative datasets on applicants and recipients of government programs as well as household survey data. Part of the job will involve working with big data sets. This is a unique opportunity to learn how to work with such data.

Key questions in the research agenda include:

• What are the effects of social safety net programs on individuals, communities, and labor markets?
• What is the optimal design of social safety net programs, including benefit generosity and type, and restrictions on applicants and recipients?
• What are the most efficient ways to insure different types of risks in the economy?

BFI’s Predoctoral Research in Economics Program (PREP) is intended to serve as a bridge between college and graduate school for students interested in empirical economics. Applicants must have completed a Bachelors degree by June 2021 and have strong quantitative and programming skills. Candidates with research experience are strongly preferred, especially those with experience in Stata, R, Python or Matlab. The ideal candidate would begin on July 1, 2021 and work for BFI for one or two years before applying to graduate school in Economics or another quantitative social science. BFI offers competitive salary and employee benefits.

The Becker Friedman Institute (BFI) is seeking a Research Professional (RP) to work on new and ongoing research projects in and related to international finance, macro, and trade. The Research Professional will work under the guidance of Professor Brent Neiman, but will also spend significant time working with Rodrigo Adao and Rohan Kekre.

Professor Neiman’s recent work can be found at www.brentneiman.com and includes contributions in international macro, finance, and trade, typically with an empirical emphasis. The RP’s work with Professor Neiman will likely focus on supporting the Global Capital Allocation Project (www.globalcapitalallocation.com) and will involve interacting with the project’s other co-founders Matteo Maggiori and Jesse Schreger as well as other PhD students and RPs involved in this work at Chicago and other universities. The RP may work on all aspects of the research process from initial processing and organizing of large datasets, to helping formulate and running analyses on the University’s high-powered computing cluster, to producing tables and figures for non-technical summaries of the work.

Professor Adao’s recent work can be found at www.rodrigoadao.com and includes contributions in international trade, macroeconomics, and econometrics. His research typically combines empirical and theoretical components to evaluate the impact of shocks in international trade and technology on the income distribution and the macro economy. The RP will work on the construction of new datasets, the implementation of estimation methodologies, and the revision and extension of theoretical results.

Professor Kekre’s recent work can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/rohankekre/ and includes contributions in macro and international finance.  The RP’s work with Professor Kekre will focus on supporting his research studying business cycles in the global economy and the ways in which monetary, fiscal, and macroprudential policies shape them. The RP can expect to assist Professor Kekre in assembling datasets from a wide array of international sources, analyzing the data, and helping to edit academic papers summarizing the research.

This position will be most desirable to candidates considering or planning to apply for graduate school during the second year of their RP role. Previous RP’s supervised by Neiman, Adao, or Kekre have attended PhD programs at UC Berkeley, University of Chicago, Harvard, Northwestern, and Yale, among others.

In addition to the frequent interaction with Professors Neiman, Adao, and Kekre, the RP will benefit from interacting with other peers as part of the large BFI Predoctoral Research in Economics Program (PREP). As a member of the Chicago academic community, the RP will be able to take advantage of a rich set of programming and can attend seminars and workshops. To learn more about what the BFI environment has to offer, please visit: https://bfi.uchicago.edu/info-for/students/.

The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) is seeking to hire a full-time Research Professional to work with Professor Magne Mogstad on ongoing and new research projects related to applied econometrics, labor and public economics. Applicants must be available to begin work in July 2021.

Successful candidates will work directly with Professor Magne Mogstad and co-authors as part of BFI’s Ronzetti Initiative for the Study of Labor Markets and BFI’s Predoctoral Research in Economics Program (PREP). The position entails collaboration on new and ongoing research projects, with the specialization in using applied microeconometric techniques to analyze modern labor markets in developed economies, including (but not limited to) 1) understanding changes in labor demand (e.g., international competition and trade, regulation and firm dynamics), 2) understanding labor supply (e.g., household labor supply, barriers to geographical and occupational mobility), and 3) policy and labor market equilibrium (e.g., the insurance and incentive effects of social insurance and safety net programs).

The program is intended to serve as a bridge between college and graduate school for students interested in empirical economics. Former Research Professionals for Professor Mogstad have all been admitted to PhD programs at the highest ranked economics programs in the US.

Applicants must have completed a Bachelors degree by June 2021 and have strong quantitative and programming skills. Candidates with research experience are strongly preferred, especially those with experience in Stata, R, Python or Matlab. The ideal candidate would begin on July 1, 2021 and work for BFI for one or two years before applying to graduate school in Economics or another quantitative social science. BFI offers competitive salary and employee benefits.