The Department of Economics Welcomes New Faculty for Fall 2025

Leah Boustan joins as a Professor and Director of the Economic History Program at the Economic Growth Center. Professor Boustan’s research lies at the intersection between economic history and labor economics. She has worked on the Great Black Migration from the rural south during and after World War II and the mass migration from Europe to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Professor Boustan was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2012, the IZA Young Labor Economist Award in 2019, and was named a Fellow of the Econometrics Society in 2022 and of the Society of Labor Economists in 2024. She also serves as co-editor at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. She received a PhD in Economics from Harvard University.

Learn more about Professor Boustan in this Economic Growth Center profile: Leah Boustan on debunking immigration myths with data

Cody Cook joins as an Assistant Professor, after spending a year as a Cowles Postdoctoral Associate. His research is in urban economics and often adapts tools from public economics and industrial organization to study questions related to inequality in cities. Some of his recent work has studied the tradeoffs of building affordable housing in different types of neighborhoods, the effects of congestion pricing in New York City and dynamic tolling in Seattle, and how preferences for neighborhood amenities vary by household income. He received a PhD in Economics from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Janet Currie joins as a Professor and co-director of the Tobin-Cowles Health Economics & Policy Program. Currie is a pioneer in the economic analysis of child development. Her current research focuses on socioeconomic differences in health, environmental threats to health, child mental health, and the long-run impact of child health. She has presented her work at universities around the world and in venues ranging from the White House to the European Investment Bank. She was the 2024 President of the American Economic Association, and is the co-director of the Program on Families and Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 2015, she was named one of the top 10 women in Economics by the World Economic Forum. She received a PhD in Economics from Princeton University.

Learn more about Professor Currie in this Department profile: Welcoming Janet Currie: A Pioneer in the Economics of Children and Families Joins Yale

Navin Kartik joins as a Professor. He started his career as faculty at the University of California at San Diego, and was subsequently at Columbia University for 17 years, where he received the Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award, and multiple teaching and PhD advising awards. Navin’s research focuses on microeconomic theory and political economy, with particular emphasis on game theory and information economics. His current work spans both theoretical topics such as tractable characterizations of incentive compatibility, and applied issues such as test-optional admissions. Navin is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and has served on numerous journal editorial boards. He is currently Lead Editor of the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. He received a PhD in Economics from Stanford University.

Maria Kogelnik joins as an Associate Research Scientist and Lecturer affiliated with the Economic Growth Center and the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics. Her research fields are experimental and behavioral economics, as well as applied microeconomics. Previously Kogelnik held positions as a postdoctoral researcher at CREED at the University of Amsterdam and a Tinbergen Institute fellow. Kogelnik received her PhD in Economics from UC Santa Barbara.

Learn more about Professor Kogelnik in this Economic Growth Center profile: Maria Kogelnik describes her research on gender differences in persisting at challenging career paths

Victoria Marone joins as an Assistant Professor. She is an economist working at the intersection of industrial organization, market design, health economics, and public economics. Her work focuses primarily on healthcare and health insurance markets, studying questions such as how best to limit market power in private health insurance markets, how best to design insurance policies in universal health insurance programs, and how best to regulate the interaction of public and private health insurance markets. She received a PhD in Economics from Northwestern University.

Theofanis (Fanis) Papamichalis joins as a Lecturer. His research, both empirical and theoretical, lies at the intersection of macroeconomics and finance. One strand of his work examines the role of optimism in shaping macroeconomic and asset return dynamics, with a particular focus on how optimism can accelerate the onset and prolong the duration of recessions. A second strand investigates the relationship between cross-sectional and time-series stock market returns, establishing a sentiment-driven inverse relationship between stock market anomalies and aggregate returns. In addition, his work in political economy demonstrates and econometrically investigates why unified U.S. governments are associated with higher excess returns and stronger annual real growth. He received a PhD in Financial Economics from University of Oxford.

Marius Ring joins as a Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Scientist. He does research in household and public finance, with an emphasis on taxation and entrepreneurship. In forthcoming work, he shows that wealth taxation can incentivize households to save more rather than less. In ongoing work, he studies the optimal decoupling of income tax accrual and payment, the effects of business regulation on entrepreneurship, the role of personal holding companies in causing tax regressivity, and how differential taxation of safe versus risky assets (like stocks) affect households’ portfolio composition. Prior to joining the Department, he was an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Texas. He received a PhD in Finance from Northwestern University.

Rohen Shah joins as a Lecturer. He specializes in experimental and behavioral economics, and his research uses RCTs to evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions. Before graduate school, Rohen co-founded and served as the CEO of the Ed Tech company DiagKNOWstics Learning. His other prior experiences include managing a state-wide tutoring company in Michigan, teaching high school math in Detroit, and making educational rap songs through the non-profit SKULE.org. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago.