Cowles Welcomes Dave Donaldson to Speak

The Cowles Foundation is proud to host Stanford University Associate Professor of Economics, Dave Donaldson, for it’s final Cowles Lunch Talk this coming Wednesday, May 3. Earlier this month, Donaldson won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal awarded by the American Economic Association (AEA). The medal, nicknamed the “Baby Nobel,” is awarded annually to a an economist under the age of 40, “who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge,” according to the organization. “Mr. Donaldson is not only the most exciting economist in the area of empirical trade, but has also made several important methodological and substantive contributions,” said the AEA in its announcement. He has “become the principal practitioner of a distinctive style of research, based on important conceptual questions, careful data work and credible identification combined with state-of-the-art structural methods.” Much of Donaldson research focuses on foreign trade, including how much cross-border differences in productivity shape international-trade flows. Among his other work cited by the AEA were studies of the economic benefits of railroad construction in the U.S. and India and the economic consequences of climate change. Donaldson earned his both his Ph.D. and M.Sc. from the London School of Economics. The Cowles Lunch Talks are held throughout the academic year where Yale and visiting faculty are invited to present on their current research. The talks are open to Cowles research staff members, faculty and graduate students in the Department of Economics, and Cowles partners. For a listing of upcoming and past lunch talks, visit the Cowles Lunch Talks page. Segments of this article by Ben Leubsdorf, WSJ