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		Featured Research: Arnaud Costinot helped revive interest in the Theory of Comparative Advantage Associate Professor Arnaud Costinot studies international trade - and has helped revive interest in economics' venerable Theory of Comparative Advantage formulated by the Scotsman David Ricardo in 1817. Costinot has made it the focus of a series of studies - he is frequently "revisiting this idea, extending it, generalizing it, confronting it with the data, and quantifying the importance that it may have for welfare." Among other things, Costinot and colleague Dave Donaldson co-authored a paper, published in 2012, that used agricultural data extracted from 55 countries to show that there is indeed a link between comparative advantage and specialization, something that is hard to demonstrate empirically. Pol Antras, an economist at Harvard University, called it "one of these papers where you think somebody should have done it 50 years ago."

		Featured Research: An experiment puts auditing under scrutiny Study co-authored by 3M Professor of Environmental Economics, Public Economics, Labor Economics Michael Greenstone and Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics Esther Duflo reduces pollution in India while calling conventional auditing markets into question. In an eye-opening experiment involving roughly 500 industrial plants in the state of Gujarat, in western India, changing the auditing system has indeed produced dramatically different outcomes - reducing pollution, and more generally calling into question the whole practice of letting firms pay the auditors who scrutinize them.

		Featured Research: Rethinking Investment Risk Financial innovation is supposed to reduce risk - in theory, at least. Yes, new financial instruments based on the housing market helped cause the financial crisis of 2008. But in the abstract, those same instruments have the potential to spread risk more evenly throughout the marketplace by making it possible to trade debt more extensively, rather than having it concentrated in a relatively few hands. Assistant Professor Alp Simsek makes the case that even in theory, financial innovation does not lower portfolio risk. Instead, it raises portfolio risks by creating situations in which parties sit on opposing sides of deep disagreements about the value of certain investments

		Economics Alumnus Robert J. Shiller wins Nobel Prize in economic sciences Robert J. Shiller (SM '68, PhD '72), an economist known for his work on the long-term fluctuations of asset prices in markets, will share the Nobel Prize in economic sciences for 2013 with Eugene F. Fama and Lars Peter Hansen. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the award was being given to the three economists "for their empirical analysis of asset prices."

		Featured Research: Assistant Professor Heidi Williams Decodes Economics of Gene Sequencing Assistant Professor Heidi Williams is trying to help scientists as they unlock the secrets of a different code: the human genome. Her focus is on determining how patent rules alter gene-related innovation. Recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER grant, Professor Williams is tracking patents' effects on developments in genomics and building an open-source database to better enable others to follow suit.

		Featured Research: Study estimates extent to which air pollution in China shortens human lives A high level of air pollution, in the form of particulates produced by burning coal, significantly shortens the lives of people exposed to it, according to a unique new study of China co-authored by 3M Professor of Environmental Economics, Michael Greenstone.

		David Autor receives 2013 James A. and Ruth Levitan Award for Excellence in Teaching Professor David Autor is a 2013 recipient of the James A. and Ruth Levitan Award for Excellence in Teaching in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. This award recognizes SHASS teachers - professors, lecturers, and graduate teaching assistants - who make a profound difference in the educational experience of MIT undergraduates. Nominations are made, by students themselves, through the course of the academic year, and reflect the positive role that our educators play in the day-to-day, week-to-week efforts of MIT students as they engage with and excel in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.

		Bengt Holmstrom and Jean Tirole win 2012 Stephen A. Ross Prize Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics Bengt Holmstrom and Annual Visiting Professor Jean Tirole (Toulouse School of Economics) have been awarded the 3rd Stephen A. Ross Prize in Financial Economics for their paper "Private and Public Supply of Liquidity," published in the Journal of Political Economy in 1998. The article has made two fundamental contributions to our understanding of liquidity needs and liquidity provision in a market economy. First, it developed a framework for analysing the need of firms to have access to liquidity in order to meet uncertain payment obligations. Second, the paper has shown that private institutions, markets or intermediaries, may be unable to provide for these needs in an efficient manner, in which case government intervention can improve on market outcomes. The Ross Prize is awarded by the Foundation for the Advancement of Research in Financial Economics (FARFE), which is committed to supporting and encouraging fundamental research in financial economics and to facilitating productive interaction between research and practice in finance. The Ross prize, created in honor of MIT's Franco Modigliani Professor of Financial Economics Stephen A. Ross, is awarded for an important research contribution in financial economics.

		Paul Joskow named Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association Paul Joskow, the Elizabeth & James Killian Professor of Economics and Management, Emeritus, has been named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economics Association. The Award of Distinguished Fellow was instituted in 1965. Past presidents of the Association shall be Distinguished Fellows. Additional Distinguished Fellows may be elected, but not more than four in any one calendar year from economists of high distinction in the United States and Canada. Professor Joskow joins Professor Jerry Hausman and Professor Emeritus Stanley Fischer as 2013 recipients of the Award of Distinguished Fellow.

		Jerry Hausman named Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association Jerry Hausman, the John & Jennie S. MacDonald Professor of Economics, has been named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economics Association. The Award of Distinguished Fellow was instituted in 1965. Past presidents of the Association shall be Distinguished Fellows. Additional Distinguished Fellows may be elected, but not more than four in any one calendar year from economists of high distinction in the United States and Canada. Professor Hausman joins Professor Emeritus Stanley Fischer and Professor Emeritus Paul Joskow as 2013 recipients of the Award of Distinguished Fellow.

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