Department Appoints Humphries

In an email from Economics Chair Dirk Bergemann, it was announced that John Eric Humphries will join the department in 2018.  He will first serve as a postdoctoral fellow at the Cowles Foundation during the 2017-18 academic year.

Humphries is finishing his Ph.D. at the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is originally from Eagle River, Alaska and has an M.A. and B.A. in economics from the University of Chicago.

His research focuses on topics in labor economics and applied microeconomics. In particular, he studies how educational and career dynamics are affected by public policy. Much of his work considers how policies affect the acquisition of human capital and the role of cognitive and non-cognitive skills in the labor market. He has published work on the GED exam, non-cognitive skills, the returns to education, and the estimation of dynamic treatment effects. His most recent work studies the causes and consequences of entry into and exit from self-employment over the life cycle.