Introducing the Cowles Foundation Anderson Fellows of 2025-26
The Cowles Foundation is excited to introduce the 2025-26 recipients of the Arvid Anderson Prize Fellowship in Economics.
This year’s cohort of Anderson Fellows includes Ph.D. students Olivia Ding, Ryan Haygood, Kyungho Lee, Michael Wang and Mai Wo. The fellows were selected by a committee of Cowles Foundation professors and rewards students with a release from teaching obligations so that they may focus on their research. The fellowship prize is awarded "to promote the development of more effective methods of inquiry in economics and the dissemination of information resulting from such studies.”
The 2025-26 cohort has a range of research interests, from knowledge diffusion to vertical integration. See below for more information on each student's area of study.
Olivia Ding
Olivia Ding is a fifth-year Ph.D. student interested in econometrics, with a focus on networks. Prior to Yale, she completed her undergraduate studies at William & Mary in 2021, double majoring in mathematics and economics.
Ryan Haygood
Ryan is an applied microeconomist with research interests in labor, education, and industrial organization. He combines quasi-experimental and structural methods to evaluate policies affecting students at the margins of higher education. His current work studies the sources of school effects on graduation rates and earnings, with a special focus on the for-profit sector.
Kyungho Lee
Kyungho Lee is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in industrial organization. His research interests include platform markets, antitrust, copyright and empirical analysis using unstructured data. Currently, he is studying how vertical integration in the platform economy affects competition and welfare through algorithmic design and multihoming restrictions.
Michael C. Wang
Michael C. Wang is a 5th year Ph.D. student working on mechanism design, dynamic games, and topics at the intersection of CS and Economics. Prior to coming to Yale, he completed his undergraduate studies at Princeton, where he studied mathematics.
Mai Wo
Mai Wo's research examines innovation through the lens of endogenous growth theory and directed technical change, focusing on how R&D investments, knowledge spillovers, and biased technological progress shape macroeconomic outcomes. At the same time, Wo investigates spatial dynamics and regional development, analyzing agglomeration economies, knowledge diffusion, and institutional factors that drive uneven technological advancement across regions, with implications for policy and structural economic transformation.