PhD Alumni Conference 2023

Thanks to the suggestion of its leader and Chair, Romain Ranciere, the Department of Economics hosted its first PhD Alumni Conference on June 9th and 10th, 2023. The event included 22 presentations spread across two parallel sessions on both days, with individual sessions on each of the following topics: Applied Econometrics, Micro Theory, Development Economics, Econometrics, Discrimination, Equity and Diversity, International Trade, Macroeconomics and Finance. The presenters were from 21 universities throughout the world. This initiative is part of an ongoing effort to strengthen the economics PhD alumni community and to promote collaboration across academia and industry.

The conference was highlighted by its Keynote speaker Prof. Rob Metcalfe from USC, who joined the faculty relatively recently and who, among others, has contributed to the USC Department of Economics rapidly rising in ratings for citations and other research. He demonstrated that rising reputation in several ways and then pointed to the rising numbers of faculty in two main teaching and research areas, Applied Economics and Environmental Economics and their growing linkages to other departments and schools throughout USC.

There were five poster presentations from currently finishing PhD students, each of whom will be going on to other universities and think tanks, and also presentations by a panel of with five alumni who have been working in industry, sharing their experiences in applying analytic tools and solving current economic challenges in various markets. These ranged from the automobile industry, to international finance and taxation, data science, transfer pricing, risk analysis, and data networks .

The organization of the conference was led by a conference committee , co-chaired by Jaime Meza-Cordero and Jeffrey Nugent along with Manuel Castro Pinho, Nauro F. Campos and Teresa Molina. Its implementation was made possible by the considerable efforts by the department staff members, especially Young Miller, Alice Holzman, and Annie Le.