Economics Around the Institute

The Economics Department has a close relationship with many other departments and especially with MIT's Sloan School of Management. Several economics faculty members hold joint appointments in the Sloan School. Business schools and investment houses often hire MIT graduates with doctorates in economics who have taken advantage of Sloan's finance courses and research opportunities.

The Economics Department benefits from interactions with the Sloan School and many other parts of MIT. The interaction between Economics and Sloan is strongest in the field of financial economics, but it is broader than this. The Sloan School has recently assembled a leading group of researchers in the economic analysis of organizational design, business strategy, and technological competition. The Sloan School's courses and seminars in these areas offer important connections to industrial organization and labor economics, and also serve as a window into current economic research by business school faculty at MIT and elsewhere. Sloan School doctoral students often find that graduate courses taught in the Economics Department provide a base for their research. Economics Ph.D. students, at the same time, often discover that the issues studied by faculty and students in the Sloan School provide ideal applications for their research.

The MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR) is sponsored by the Economics Department, the Sloan School, and the MIT Energy Laboratory. The Director of CEEPR is Paul Joskow, who holds a joint appointment in the Economics Department and the Sloan School. The Center investigates economic, regulatory, and technological issues related to energy and the environment, and is supported by corporations, trade associations, environmental organizations, and grants from foundations and government agencies. The Center holds annual meetings and conferences to discuss policy issues with business and academic economists. Regular participants in CEEPR research programs include Paul Joskow, Michael Greenstone, James Poterba, Nancy Rose, and Richard Schmalensee.

CEEPR is a co-sponsor of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which supports research on global warming and related topics by faculty and students in the Economics Department, the Sloan School, the School of Science, and the School of Engineering. The Program provides opportunities for economists and management faculty to work with specialists on climate change in the School of Science, and with emissions control and remediation experts in the School of Engineering.

The Economics Department also has close ties with the Political Science Department. The Political Science Department is currently in the midst of a major initiative to strengthen and emphasize its presence in the field of positive political economy. This line of research, which straddles the boundary between economics and political science, emphasizes the use of economic models and economic insights to understand decision-making in political settings. Economists in fields such as regulatory economics and public finance have increasingly come to realize that recognizing and analyzing the political factors that underlie current policies can open a rich new vein of research. Several recent graduates of the Economics Department's Ph.D. program are now leading scholars in the field of positive political economy, and the close ties between these departments should continue to produce scholars with such interests. Two faculty members, Michael Piore and James Snyder, hold joint appointments in Economics and Political Science.

The Economics Department has a long-standing relationship with MIT's Urban Studies and Planning Department, where William Wheaton holds a joint appointment. Another member of the Urban Studies faculty, Frank Levy, is an expert on income and wealth distribution in the U.S. and its changes over time. He is also active in the labor economics program in the Economics Department.

MIT's excellence in engineering, science, and management has created valuable educational and research opportunities for Economics Department faculty and students. The Department in turn has contributed its experience and expertise to research and education throughout the Institute.