All Else Equal

Rüdiger Bachmann's academic career includes an assistant professorship at the University of Michigan, full professorships at the RWTH Aachen University and Frankfurt University, as well as visiting professorships at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University and Boston University. Bachmann’s research area is macroeconomics, where he specializes in the macroeconomics of heterogeneous agents. He is also interested in the implications of uncertainty and expectation formation on macroeconomic outcomes. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, the Review of Economic Dynamics, Quantitative Economics, Economics Letters, and Economic Theory. At Notre Dame he teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in macroeconomics.

Rudi's Homepage

Rudi's Twitter

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Mitchell Larson is a senior studying Economics and Applied & Computational Math & Statistics at the University of Notre Dame where he serves as co-President of the Federal Reserve and Fiscal Challenge Club. A lifelong interest in dysfunctional relationships led him to be interested in Congress, the most dysfunctional group of them all, and that dysfunction’s effect on fiscal policy.

Michael McElroy is a junior at the University of Notre Dame pursuing a degree in Economics, with a supplementary major in Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics and a minor in the College of Arts and Letters Honors Program. He is an active member of the Federal Reserve and Fiscal Challenge Club. 

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Prior to her appointment as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies, Mary served as the Associate Chair and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Economics Department.  Her current research interests are economics pedagogy and the telecommunications industry.  Dean Flannery received her B.A. and M.A in Economics from the University of Notre Dame in 1978 and 1979 respectively and her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1996.

Mary's faculty page

Raj Chetty's “Using Big Data to Solve Economic and Social Problems Course”

Vox's article on changing the way we teach undergrad economics

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Heather Reynolds is the Managing Director for the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) at the University of Notre Dame. LEO aims to identify the innovative, effective and scalable programs that help people move out of poverty. Reynolds drives LEO's strategic plan, which seeks to influence poverty policy and support the culture of evaluation among service providers to the poor nationwide.

Reynolds has extensive experience in strategic planning, fundraising, and social enterprise. She’s an expert speaker on poverty - both the modern issues and the new solutions - as well as nonprofit strategy. And as a woman who never stops seeking fresh solutions, Reynolds pioneered Catholic Charities Fort Worth’s research initiatives.

Through top-tier impact evaluations, LEO aims to identify the innovative, effective and scalable programs that help people move out of poverty. LEO’s research is conducted by faculty from the University of Notre Dame as well as scholars from across the country with expertise in designing and evaluating the impact of domestic anti-poverty programs. Their research initiatives span a wide range of poverty focus areas.

If you'd like to reach out about undergraduate opportunities with LEO, please contact Brady Ruffing at [email protected].

Heather's LEO page

LEO's undergraduate research assistants

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Lakshmi Iyer is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. Her primary research fields are development economics and political economy, with a special emphasis on property rights and the distribution of political power within societies. Her research has examined many dimensions of the distribution of political power within emerging market countries, including the legacy of colonial rule, the division of authority between politicians and bureaucrats, and the determinants of conflict. She is currently working on several projects related to the determinants and consequences of women’s political participation.

At Notre Dame, Lakshmi Iyer teaches an undergraduate course on “Political Economy of Development.”

Lakshmi's Website

Keough School of Global Affairs

International Development Studies Minor

Papers and resources mentioned in the episode

Blattman (2020)

Banerjee and Iyer (2013)

Nunn (2008)

BRAC

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Eric Sims is a professor of economics at Notre Dame, where he has taught since 2009. He is a macroeconomist whose research focuses on business cycles and monetary and fiscal policies. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and several other scholarly journals. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and also serves as a research consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

At Notre Dame he teaches classes in macroeconomics and monetary policy at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and is a past recipient of the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. He has also co-authored an online textbook for use in intermediate macroeconomics courses.

Eric's Website

Eric talking Fed Policy @ the FedListens sessions

Brian Levey joined the Mendoza faculty in 2007 after a twenty-year legal career, most recently focused on building corporate ethics and compliance programs. He currently teaches the introductory undergraduate business law course, as well as several ethics classes in the undergraduate, graduate and executive programs. Levey is a recipient of the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, as well as the Master of Science in Accountancy Dincolo Outstanding Professor Award. In 2016, he was named a faculty fellow at Notre Dame's Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning.

Prior to joining the college of business, Brian was Fannie Mae's vice president for ethics and was the director of compliance and business ethics with Smiths Group plc. Previously, Levey was a deputy ethics officer and associate counsel with MCI (formerly WorldCom and now Verizon Business)

Brian's twitter

Alison Levey's amazing children's book: Ready Regan

Watch Brian motivate our students (and us) during the Pandemic (oh and he shows you his favorite beer cans)

Music sampled from 2 Chainz - NCAA

Emily N. Garbinsky is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. As a consumer psychologist, she studies how and when money can increase happiness - finding that money can positively impact happiness, consumption enjoyment, and relationship satisfaction depending on how it is managed, saved, and spent. Her empirical approach includes primary data collection, such as lab and field experiments, as well as secondary data analysis of bank transaction records and publicly available longitudinal surveys. Her research highlights how various consumer financial decisions can impact happiness by focusing on three streams of research: 1) understanding financial decision-making within romantic couples, 2) motivating individual consumers to make wiser choices with their money, and 3) helping consumers to spend money in ways that will increase their enjoyment of consumption experiences.

New York Times Article featuring Emily on Income Infidelity

Emily getting pied.

Mitchell Olsen is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. His research interests are in marketing strategy, with a specific focus on substantive issues that occur at the intersection of any, and all, of the following sub-areas: (1) Brands, (2) Innovation, and (3) ‘Green’ (i.e., environmentally sustainable) marketing strategies. Across these areas, his research program primarily focuses on how managers’ new product-related actions impact the brand, itself. For instance, an article he published in the Journal of Marketing demonstrates how “green” new product introductions impact consumers’ attitudes toward the brand.

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Christopher C.W. Cronin is an applied microeconomist with research interests in health economics. His current projects focus on the impact of stay-at-home mandates during the covid-19 crisis, the relationship between health insurance and medical care demand, the determinants of health facility choice, and individuals' choices relating to obesity. He specializes in the estimation of dynamic microeconometric models.

NBER Covid-19 Working Papers

Chris' website

Recent research on NPR

Recent research in the NY Times

During this episode Forrest referred to Erin Hoffman-Harding - ND Vice President of Student Affairs - as Erin Hoffmore-Harding.  This was mainly Jason's fault because he was making funny faces across the desk at Forrest at the time.  Our bad Erin.

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Colin Jones is an Associate Teaching Professor of Finance, specializing in applied investments. Prior to joining Mendoza, he was a Clinical Associate Professor of Finance at the University of South Carolina, where he served as director of the Carolina Finance Scholars Program, director of the Student Managed Investment Fund, and director of the Carolina Finance & Investment Association. He received the Alfred G. Smith Jr. Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2016, and was named the Michael A. Hill Professor of the Year in 2018. He is co-author of the digital introductory textbook A Living Introduction to Finance, a real-time learning platform that has saved students over a million dollars on textbooks while improving the efficacy of introductory courses across the country.

Memos from Howard Marks 

Wall Street Journal article exploring this phenomenon (more) (more x2)

ND Investment Club

ND Wall Street Club

ND Economics Club

ND SIBC

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