Keynote Speakers
Professor, Department of Economics, Cornell University
Michèle Belot is Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics and at the School of Industrial Labor Relations. She held previous appointments in the United Kingdom (University of Edinburgh, Oxford University and the University of Essex) and at the European University Institute. She obtained her Ph.D. in Economics from Tilburg University (CentER) in 2003. Her research interests are broadly in applied microeconomics, with a special interest in experimental work in areas related to labour, health and education. She has published in journals such as the Review of Economic Studies, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Health Economics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and The Economic Journal. She is the current President of the European Association of Labour Economists.
Her recent work consists of designing and testing interventions using randomized controlled trials, in the domains of health and job search. In the domain of health, her work focuses on interventions designed to encourage individuals to adopt healthier behaviors. Most interventions tested target children and low income families. In the domain of job search, the interventions are aimed at providing relevant information to job seekers.
Professor, School of Economics, University of New South Wales
Pauline Grosjean is a Professor in the School of Economics at UNSW,a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). Previously at the University of San Francisco and the University of California at Berkeley, she has also worked as an Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. She completed her PhD in economics at Toulouse School in Economics in 2006 after graduating from the Ecole Normale Supérieure. Her research studies the historical and dynamic context of economic development. In particular, she focuses on how culture and institutions interact and shape long-term economic development and individual behaviour. She has published research that studies the historical process of a wide range of factors that are crucial for economic development, including cooperation and violence, trust, gender norms, support for democracy and for market reforms, immigration, preferences for education, and conflict.
Professor, Department of Economics, University of Michigan
Basit Zafar is an applied microeconomist. His research is focused on labor economics, economics of education, and household finance. Specifically, his work seeks to understand how individuals make decisions under uncertainty. Professor Zafar's research employs a disparate set of empirical methods and techniques, including the use of subjective expectations data and experimental data.
He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2008, and his B.Sc from Caltech. Before joining the faculty at Michigan, he held positions at Arizona State University and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.