Faculty Promotions

John Stone has been promoted to Senior Lecturer. Professor Stone joined our faculty in 2014 after earning a Ph.D. in economics from IU in 2012. He held a faculty position at Weber State University for two years prior to his position here. His primary responsibilities include teaching undergraduate econometrics and international trade courses. His research focuses on areas related to the economics of education in primary and secondary schooling, as well as questions surrounding economic growth and inequality. In addition, Professor Stone also serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies.

Gustavo Torrens has been promoted to associate professor with tenure. Professor Torrens joined our faculty in 2013 as assistant professor after earning a Ph.D. in economics from Washington University in St. Louis. His research centers on political economy, economic development and international economics. He does theory as well as applied work, including lab experiments. His research has been published in Journal of International Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Economic Theory and Public Choice. Professor Torrens is Director of the Program on Political Economy at the Ostrom Workshop at IU.

Faculty Honors

Lee J. Alston was named a Fellow of the Economic History Association.

Yoosoon Chang was elected President of the Korea-America Economic Association in 2018. She served as President-elect in 2019 and is serving as President in 2020. Professor Chang was invited as a keynote speaker for the Women in Macro, Finance and Economic History Workshop which was to be held at DIW Berlin in May 2020. The workshop has been postponed to May 3-4, 2021 due to the pandemic.

Bulent Guler received a Research Fellowship from the Bank for International Settlements.

Laura Liu coauthored “Estimating Global Bank Network Connectedness” which received the fifteenth Richard Stone Prize in Applied Econometrics in April 2020 for the best paper(s) published in the preceding two volumes of the Journal of Applied Econometrics.

Joon Park, Ruli Xiao and Nastassia Krukava received the IU Trustees Teaching Award. The Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award was established to honor individuals who have a positive impact on learning through the direct teaching of students, especially undergraduates.

Faculty News and Accomplishments

Joshua Bernstein authored “A model of state-dependent monetary policy,” in the Journal of Monetary Economics, available online 2 July 2020.

Mostafa Beshkar co-authored “Optimal Trade Policy with Trade Imbalances,” in the Journal of Monetary Economics, 109, (2020), 65-82.

Bulent Guler co-authored “Price Search, Consumption Inequality and Expenditure Inequality over the Life-Cycle,” which is forthcoming in International Economic Review.

Ahmad Lashkaripour authored “Within-Industry Specialization and Global Market Power,” American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 12(1), (2020), 75-124; “Discrete Trade,” Journal of International Economics, 126(C), (2020); “Weight-Based Quality Specialization,” Journal of International Economics, 127, (2020); “Can Trade Taxes be a Major Source of Government Revenue” has been accepted by the Journal of the European Economics Association; and “The Cost of a Global Trade War: A Sufficient Statistics Approach” has been conditionally accepted by the Journal of International Economics.

Laura Liu co-authored “Forecasting with Dynamic Panel Data Models,” in Econometrica, 88(1), (2020), 171-201.

Volodymyr Lugovskyy co-authored “What is the impact of introducing a parallel OTC market? Theory and evidence from the Chinese interbank FX market,” which is in press at the Journal of Financial Economics. Dong Lu (Ph.D., IU, 2017) was one of the co-authors for this article. Professor Lugovskyy presented “Do Larger Importing Firms Face Lower Freight Rates?” at the Econometric Society/Bocconi University Virtual World Congress 2020. Additionally, Professor Lugovskyy organized the virtual Empirical Investigations in International Trade Conference. (Read the article about this conference in the Around the {Department} section of the newsletter.)

Christian Matthes co-authored “Detecting and Analyzing the Effects of Time-Varying Parameters in DSGE Models” in the International Economic Review, 61(1), (2020), 105-125. Professor Matthes also co-authored “Are the Effects of Financial Market Disruptions Big or Small?” which has been accepted by the Review of Economics & Statistics, posted online September 24, 2020.

Todd Walker writes “I normally highlight a research paper or conference but this year I’m most proud of my students: Maggie, Junjie and Ruoyun. All three finished their dissertations under difficult circumstances and all three landed great jobs. Maggie is going to the Fed Board; Ruoyun is going to Grinnell College; and Junjie is going to Central University of Finance and Economics.”

Ike Brannon, an IU economics alumnus (Ph.D. 1993), writes about the expected U.S. Senate confirmation of Chris Waller to the Board of Governors.

Former IU Economics Professor Christopher Waller is expected to join the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Once confirmed by the full Senate later this month, he will be a permanent voting member of the FOMC, the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets U.S. monetary policy.

Waller was on the IU Economics faculty from 1985 until 1998 when he accepted the position as Gatton Chair of Macroeconomics at the University of Kentucky. He is currently the executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, where he works with Indiana economics alumnus, President and CEO James Bullard (Ph.D. 1990).

Numerous of our Ph.D. alumni had been in recent years or are currently working on the staff of economists at the Board of Governors, including Jennifer Roush (2001), Hess Chung (2009), Lamont Black (2007), Ekaterina Peneva (2007), Manuel Gonzalez-Astudillo (2012), and Maggie Jacobson (2020). They are a part of the contingent of over fifty IU Ph.D. economists who work in the Washington, DC area.

Note: Christopher J. Waller took office as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on December 18, 2020, to fill an unexpired term ending January 31, 2030.