Mark Aguiar addresses issues in open- and closed-economy macroeconomics. Aguiar has studied emerging market business cycles, sovereign debt, the political economy of capital taxation, and growth. His research on sovereign debt concerns self-fulfilling debt crises and equilibrium maturity choice. He has also investigated life-cycle consumption, time allocation, inequality, and trends in labor supply. His research includes work on young men’s labor supply and hand-to-mouth consumption behavior. Recent publications include: “Who are the Hand-to-Mouth?” with Mark Bils and Corina Boar (Review of Economic Studies, 2025); and “Micro Risks and (Robust) Pareto Improving Policies,” with Manuel Amador, and Cristina Arellano (American Economic Review, 2024). Aguiar and Amador co-authored The Economics of Sovereign Debt and Default (Princeton University Press, 2021). The book provides a unified and tractable theoretical framework to study sovereign debt markets and sovereign default.

Alan Blinder was the recipient of the 2023 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize, awarded by the American Academy of Political and Social Science. His most recent book, A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961–2021, was recognized as a finalist for the Association of American Publishers 2023 PROSE Award for Excellence in Economics. Blinder’s research continues to focus on central banking, the latest work being an essay published by the Peterson Institute examining the Fed’s failure to hold inflation in check (“Was something structurally wrong at the FOMC?” October 2024) and a comprehensive survey paper on progress with and prospects for central bank communication with the general public co-authored with Michael Ehrmann, Jakob de Haan, and David-Jan Jansen and published in the Journal of Economic Literature. His main project going forward continues to be turning his pretty unique course on central banking (now labeled SPI 524) into a book. For many years, Blinder has taught this course to a mixture of MPA students, MFin students, a smattering of undergraduates, and the very rare PhD student. It is about monetary policy, of course, but also about the unusual position of the central bank in the government, why they make decisions by committee, how their decisionmaking must and does change during crisis—and much else.

Sylvain Chassang is an applied is microeconomist whose research interests are in game theory, industrial organization, and development. His recent publications include: “Valuing the Time of the Self-Employed,” with Daniel Agness, Travis Baseler, Pascaline Dupas, and Erik Snowberg (Review of Economic Studies, 2025); “Using Divide-and-Conquer to Improve Tax Collection,” with Lucia Del Carpio and Samuel Kapon (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2024); “Regulating Collusion,” with Juan Ortner (Annual Review of Economics, 2023); “Robust Screens for Non-Competitive Bidding in Procurement Auctions,” with Kei Kawai, Jun Nakabayashi, and Juan Ortner (Econometrica, 2022); and “Data-Driven Incentive Alignment in Capitation Schemes,” with Mark Braverman (Journal of Public Economics, 2022). Chassang’s current research examines monitoring harassment in organizations with Laura Boudreau, Ada Gonzales-Torres, and Rachel Heath; and valuing the time of the self-employed with Daniel Agness, Travis Baseler, Pascaline Dupas, and Erik Snowberg. He is currently working on the importance of the used car market in understanding the impact of public policy in transport emissions.

Ellora Derenoncourt works on inequality and labor markets. One of her research agendas focuses on the long-run determinants of racial inequality in the US. Derenoncourt’s article “Can you move to opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration” (American Economic Review, 2022) showed that the Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to northern and western cities US marked a pivotal moment in the geography of opportunity for Black families. As backlash to the Migration intensified, areas once distinguished for high rates of upward mobility for Black children subsequently transformed into mobility deserts. Derenoncourt and Montialoux’s “Minimum wages and racial inequality” (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2021) uncovered the first-order role historical federal minimum wage policy played in the trajectory of the Black-white earnings gap. Her paper with Chi Hyun Kim, Moritz Kuhn, and Moritz Schularick, “Wealth of two nations: the US racial wealth gap, 1860-2020” (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2023), traces the US’s large and persistent racial wealth gap to its origins under slavery and Jim Crow. Future work in this area explores questions raised by this previous body of work, including the role of social insurance policies in racial inequality and the historical effect of incarceration in the U.S. on labor market gaps. A second research agenda explores determinants of wages in low-wage labor markets. Derenoncourt and Weil’s “Voluntary Minimum Wages: The Local Labor Market Effects of National Retailer Policies” (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2025) explore this in the context of large retailers’ voluntary minimum wages and their impact on the broader labor market. In work with François Gerard, Lorenzo Lagos, and Claire Montialoux, she is exploring the impact of minimum wages on informal workers and inequality in Brazil as well as the role of unions in wage inequality in Brazil.

William Dudley‘s recent research has focused on digital finance, the impact of artificial intelligence on finance, U.S. monetary policy, and banking regulation and supervision. With respect to digital finance, he has led the Digital Finance Project Team of the Bretton Woods Committee (with Carolyn Wilkins) and initiated a series of policy briefs that examine the dangers and opportunities in crypto markets, the potential positive use cases of the blockchain technology and decentralized finance (DeFi), stablecoins, tokenization, and an evaluation of central bank digital currencies. With Nellie Liang, he authored the Brookings paper, “Next steps for Genius payment stablecoins,” published in March 2026. With respect to monetary policy, he has critiqued the current operating regime of the Federal Reserve and argued that how the Fed’s 2 percent average inflation targeting regime has been implemented ensured that the Fed would be slow to tighten monetary policy and that inflation would rise as a consequence. Dudley headed a working group for the Group of Thirty, which published a paper that evaluated what regulatory and supervisory changes are needed to address the shortcomings exposed by the 2023 banking crisis. He led two Group of Thirty working groups that published papers on US monetary policy: “The Federal Reserve Monetary Policy Framework Review: A Comprehensive Approach to Improve Robustness” was published in April 2025 and “The Federal Reserve’s Monetary Policy Framework: More to Do to Buttress Independence,” in May 2026. Looking forward over the next two years, his research will continue to be focused on digital finance, the impact of artificial intelligence on finance, U.S. monetary policy, and regulatory reform.

Seema Jayachandran is a development economist whose research focuses on environmental conservation, gender equality, health, and other microeconomic topics in developing countries. Her recent publications include: “Informing Mothers about the Benefits of Conversing with Infants: Experimental Evidence from Ghana,” with Pascaline Dupas, Camille Falezan, and Mark Walsh (American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2025) and “The Negligible Effect of Free Contraception on Fertility: Experimental Evidence from Burkina Faso” with Pascaline Dupas, Adriana Lleras-Muney, and Pauline Rossi (American Economic Review, 2025). Jayachandran’s current research focuses on policies to extend healthcare access in rural Uganda (with Isabelle Cohen, Rebecca Dizon-Ross, Mika Inoue, and Fiker Negash), how the practice of cousin marriage in the Middle East affects women’s well-being (with Mohammed Al Shafaee, Erica Field, and Munir Squires), and the prevalence of public harassment of women in Indian cities (with Lori Beaman and Anisha Sharma).

Ilyana Kuziemko‘s research falls in the intersection of public finance, labor and political economy. Recent projects examine why union density has fallen in the US but not other countries, how changes in household formation distort inequality statistics, and the rise of the gender gap in partisan identity. “Local Economic and Political Effects of Trade Deals: Evidence from NAFTA” (2024, with Jiwon Choi, Ebonya Washington, and Gavin Wright) argues that the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement lead to large employment losses in counties with industries dependent on pre-NAFTA tariffs and led voters in these counties to punish the Democrats in future elections. “Mobility for All: Representative Intergenerational Mobility Estimates over the 20th Century” (2024, with Elisa Jacome and Suresh Naidu) documents large increases in intergenerational relative mobility for the cohorts who entered the labor market in the low-inequality post-World War II decades, while mobility declined thereafter. “Compensate the Losers? Economy-policy preferences and partisan realignment in the US” (2022, with Nicolas Longuet Marx and Suresh Naidu) argues that, at least in the US, the Democratic Party’s evolution on economic issues has played an important role in explaining why less-educated voters have left the party. “The Cold War and the U.S. Labor Market” makes the case that massive Cold-War-era military procurement increased demand for blue-collar workers, reducing income inequality in the decades immediately after World War II.

Loretta Mester‘s recent research has focused on the formulation of U.S. monetary policy, the implementation framework for U.S. monetary policy, central bank independence and communications, and bank regulation, stablecoins, and cryptocurrency. She presented on ways the Fed could improve its monetary policy strategic and operating frameworks. Her paper, “Disciplined Judgment in Monetary Policymaking,” was published in 2026; her paper, “Considerations for the Federal Reserve’s Upcoming Framework Review,” was published in 2025; and her paper, “The Federal Reserve’s Ample Reserves Monetary Policy Operating Framework: It Isn’t as Simple as It Looks,” was published in 2025. She presented her work at several important venues including the American Economic Association Meetings, and the Wharton Future of Finance Forum in 2006, and the European Parliament, Hoover Institution Annual Monetary Policy Conference the Shadow Open Market Committee 50th Anniversary Conference, the Booth School U.S. Monetary Policy Forum, and the National Association for Business Economics, all in 2025. She became a members of the panel of finance experts at University of Chicago’s Booth School, Clark Center for Global Markets, which is regularly polled on a range of timely policy-relevant issues in finance. And she was one of three experts selected to review the Framework for Additional Monetary Policy Tools at the Reserve Bank of Australia in February 2026.

Evan Soltas is a public finance economist studying housing and urban policy. His most recent project, “How Costly Is Permitting in Housing Development?” (with Jonathan Gruber), estimates the economic costs of permitting and planning in Los Angeles, using the market price of land with preapproved (but not yet built) housing. In several ongoing projects, he continues to study the effects of de-facto regulatory burdens on the supply of new housing in U.S. cities. In his earlier work, he analyzed public programs serving lower-income households. With Charlie Rafkin and Adam Solomon (“Self-Targeting in U.S. Transfer Programs,” conditionally accepted at the Journal of Political Economy), he shows that the voluntary take-up of low-income transfers systematically detects households with the highest need, as indicated by their current consumption and lifetime income. Another project with Rafkin (“Social Preferences and Bargaining Failure in Eviction”) studied eviction and the design of emergency rental assistance, highlighting the relevance of interpersonal hostility between tenants and landlords in causing eviction.

Carolyn Wilkins is conducting research with Yasuo Terajima and Shirley Ren on the implications of monetary policy and the distribution of income. Wilkins also is presenting at several important venues on lessons learned for central banks during COVID: Hoover Institution (Getting Global Monetary Policy on Track, May 2-3, 2024); and Sveriges Riksbank (The Quest for Nominal Stability: Lessons from Three Decades with Inflation Targeting, May 23-24, 2024). In a collaboration with William Dudley, Wilkins co-leads the Bretton Woods Committee (BWC) Digital Finance Project Team (DFPT), which is tasked with identifying key outstanding issues and risks across the decentralized finance regime. Wilkins was one of three experts selected in July 2022 to conduct an independent review of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), the first wide‑ranging review of the RBA since current monetary policy arrangements were put in place in the 1990s. The final report, An RBA Fit for the Future, was presented to the Treasurer in March 2023.

Owen Zidar‘s research focuses on tax policy, inequality, and entrepreneurship, using administrative tax data to study how policy shapes economic outcomes. With Eric Zwick, he completed The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There (Henry Holt, September 2026), which documents how private business owners have accumulated vast wealth across the country. With Raj Chetty, John Van Reenen, and Eric Zwick, he continues to investigate how entrepreneurship and parental background shape economic opportunity. With Eric Zwick and several co-authors, he is studying how state tax reforms affect pass-through business activity. With Ilyana Kuziemko, he is measuring the financial circumstances of young adults, and with Kate Smith and Henrik Kleven, he is examining behavioral responses to UK capital gains tax reform. Going forward, Zidar plans to deepen research on inherited wealth using IRS-linked data with Danny Yagan and Eric Zwick, refine estimates of how pass-through and corporate tax reforms affect investment and labor supply, and continue the “Rags to Riches” project to study long-run intergenerational mobility using historical census and PSID data. He also expects to continue translating this work into policy analysis and to engage broader audiences around the launch of The Everywhere Millionaire.