NBER Pre- and Post-Doctoral Fellows for 2020–21 Academic Year

Fifteen researchers, 10 post-doctoral scholars and five pre-doctoral students, have been named to NBER fellowships for the 2020–21 academic year. These fellows are selected by review panels following widely disseminated calls for applications.

Post-Doctoral Fellowships

Emilie Jackson, who is analyzing how the shift from traditional employment to self-employment affects tax revenues and the demand for government benefits, and Sean Myers, who studies the funding of state and local defined-benefit pension plans, have been awarded fellowships for research on long-term fiscal policy. These fellowships are supported by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. Both Jackson and Myers are completing PhDs at Stanford University.

Victoria Marone, who studies the design and regulation of health insurance markets, and Francis Wong, who is analyzing how medical debt affects mental and physical health and health care utilization, will be supported by the NBER’s National Institute on Aging Fellowship Program in Aging and Health Research. Marone is finishing her PhD at Northwestern University, and Wong is finishing his at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Social Security Administration supports two fellows through the NBER’s Retirement and Disability Policy Research Program. For the coming academic year, the fellows will be Adrienne Sabety, who is studying the increase in opioid prescriptions of 30 days or more for older patients, and Mingli Zhong, who is analyzing the wealth and welfare consequences of retirement saving policies, including features of automatic enrollment plans and default options. Sabety is completing her PhD at Harvard University, Zhong hers at the University of Pennsylvania.

Adelina Yanyue Wang, who completed her doctoral studies at Stanford University, will be the NBER’s Post-Doctoral Fellow on the Economics of an Aging Workforce. This fellowship is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Wang studies how access to affordable and quality long-term care services for the elderly affects the retirement decisions of their adult children.

Caitlin Gorback, who completed her PhD at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, will be a post-doctoral researcher on the NBER’s Transportation in the 21st Century Initiative. Gorback studies how transportation innovations such as ride-sharing affect the distribution of economic activities in urban areas.

Krisztina Orban, who completed her doctorate at the University of Chicago, will be studying entrepreneurship with the support of a post-doctoral award for entrepreneurship research from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.  Her dissertation research analyzed the determinants of firm-level and aggregate productivity in Hungary after the fall of communism.

Santiago Perez, who studies the intergenerational transmission of economic status in a variety of settings, including by using linked decennial U.S. Census data, is the inaugural NBER post-doctoral fellow on the Economics of Mobility.  This position is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   Perez is an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Davis, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER.

Pre-Doctoral Fellowships

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation supports three pre-doctoral fellows who are studying energy economics. For 2020–21, these fellows are Sarah Armitage of Harvard University, who is studying technology transitions and the timing of environmental policy, Nafisa Lohawala of the University of Michigan, who is studying the effects of electric vehicle subsidies on vehicle demand, and Aspen Fryberger Underwood of Clemson University, who is analyzing the factors that affect the adoption and usage of electric vehicles.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation also supports two pre-doctoral fellows studying behavioral macroeconomics. The fellows for the coming year will be Miguel Acosta of Columbia University, whose dissertation studies the aggregate demand effects of monetary policy, and Peter Maxted of Harvard University, who is examining the effects of business and consumer sentiment in a macro-financial model.

Calls for fellowship applications are posted each fall, and application closing dates are usually in early December.

Register for announcements of future fellowship opportunities

This article was updated on Aug. 5, 2020.