Projects for the Dedicated Research Fellow Track

When you apply to the Research Fellows Program, you can select the dedicated track and indicate your interest in one or more of the following positions.

Projects are organized by their primary field of study, but projects are often multidisciplinary. We encourage you to look at projects within your chosen field as well as in related fields.

Accounting

Faculty: Rebecca Lester, Juan Carlos Suarez Serrato
Status: Open

Rebecca Lester, associate professor of accounting, and Juan Carlos Suarez Serrato, professor of economics, are recruiting one research fellow who will work on projects studying the effects of tax policies on businesses, including effects on investment decisions, workers, and financial reporting choices. The research will include work with large administrative datasets and collaboration with a broader team of Stanford GSB affiliates as part of the Business, Taxation, and Society Initiative. Due to the nature of some administrative datasets, U.S. citizenship may be prioritized during the selection process.

Requirements
A bachelor’s degree or its equivalent, Economics or Accounting major is not required. Knowledge of Stata, SQL, R, or other programming experience required.

Economic Analysis & Policy

Faculty: Rebecca Diamond
Status: Closed

Rebecca Diamond, Class of 1988 Professor of Economics, is hiring a research fellow who will work with large, administrative data studying migration, affordable housing policies, earnings dynamics. The topics will be highly empirical with a focus on producing policy-relevant results on how local labor and housing markets shape inequality over a variety of dimensions.

Requirements
A bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. Some knowledge of econometrics/statistics, along with programming experience and economics coursework, would be highly useful. A focus on attention to detail and careful data analysis is key.

Faculty: Rebecca Lester, Juan Carlos Suarez Serrato
Status: Open

Rebecca Lester, associate professor of accounting, and Juan Carlos Suarez Serrato, professor of economics, are recruiting one research fellow who will work on projects studying the effects of tax policies on businesses, including effects on investment decisions, workers, and financial reporting choices. The research will include work with large administrative datasets and collaboration with a broader team of Stanford GSB affiliates as part of the Business, Taxation, and Society Initiative. Due to the nature of some administrative datasets, U.S. citizenship may be prioritized during the selection process.

Requirements
A bachelor’s degree or its equivalent, Economics or Accounting major is not required. Knowledge of Stata, SQL, R, or other programming experience required.

Faculty: Shoshana Vasserman
Status: Closed

Shoshana Vasserman, assistant professor of economics, is hiring a research fellow to work on ongoing research projects involving the empirical evaluation and design of policies for changing marketplaces. Possible project topics include congestion pricing for road use and supply & demand pressures for local news, and will likely involve empirical work to develop and analyze never-before-seen data from large-scale ongoing experiments. Results from the research are of direct policy relevance and may be reported in white papers and mainstream media publications in addition to technical academic publications.

The fellow will be expected to contribute to the different aspects of empirical work involved in the project, including data management, munging, visualization, simulation, and basic econometrics. Pending interest, there will be ample opportunity to learn and apply more advanced computational techniques as well as economic theory. The fellow can also expect to work in a team setting, in which they will get to collaborate with and learn from faculty members and older students/fellows.

Requirements
A bachelor’s degree or its equivalent, a strong quantitative background, excellent computer programming skills, and a serious interest in pursuing research in economics. A background in economics is helpful, but not necessary. Previous research experience is a plus. Intellectual curiosity and a desire to learn how to do things well can compensate for most technical qualifications.

Finance

Faculty: Matteo Maggiori
Status: Open

Matteo Maggiori, The Moghadam Family Professor and Professor of Finance is recruiting three pre-doctoral research fellows to be part of the Global Capital Allocation Project (GCAP) Lab. A substantial component of the work focuses on big-data applications in international macroeconomics and finance. The GCAP Lab mixes data, economic theory, and analytics to understand how capital moves around the world with the aim of improving international economic policy. Current projects include, for example: (i) mapping how global firms finance themselves through foreign subsidiaries, often shell companies in tax havens; (ii) understanding China’s rising presence in global financial markets; and (iii) understanding how capital is allocated in emerging economies.

Results from the research are of policy relevance and of interests to general media (such as The Economist or Wall Street Journal). While the research fellows’ focus is on learning and producing academic research, the fellows also have the opportunity to interface with policy institutions, and to produce publicly available statistics and graphical interfaces that help communicate the research to the broader public.

The research fellows will be dedicated to Professors Maggiori and Coppola but will also work closely and directly with all members of the lab, including other lab co-directors such as Jesse Schreger at Columbia Business School, co-authors on academic papers, PhD students, and other research assistants. This is a vibrant community with plenty of interaction and the expectation of working collaboratively in smaller groups and then present research progress to the broader group.

Results from the research are of policy relevance and of interest to general media, such The Economist or Wall Street Journal, and in addition to pure academic research you will be also involved in producing publicly available statistics and research summaries that help communicate the research to the broader public.

Requirements
A bachelor’s degree or its equivalent, a strong quantitative background, excellent computer programming skills, and a serious interest in pursuing research in economics. A background in economics is helpful but not necessary. Previous research experience is a plus.

Political Economy

Faculty: Saumitra Jha
Status: Closed

Saumitra Jha, associate professor of political economy, is recruiting a research fellow to work on a set of projects that draw lessons from natural experiments in history and contemporary field experiments to help us learn new approaches for mitigating violent conflict and political polarization.

The topics include developing financial solutions to political conflict, how to maintain peace in post-conflict environments and understanding the effectiveness and limitations of non-violent protest. The area focuses and datasets we will develop will be drawn from around the world, including India/South Asia, France, Japan and Mexico, and involve a strong historical component.

Requirements
A bachelor’s degree or its equivalent, econometrics training in causal inference, knowledge of Stata, Python or other programming experience. Economics major not required. The ideal candidate will have a deep interest in the political aspects of economic development, a love of social science history, strong attention to detail and strong programming skills in Stata, Python, etc. Language skills in French, Japanese, or Spanish would be a plus.

Didn’t Find What You Were Looking For?

We are not currently offering dedicated positions in the Marketing; Organizational Behavior; or Operations, Information & Technology fields. Projects will be added as they become available. 

If you did not find a project within your field or another project of interest to you, you can explore the Standard Track, which follows a rotational model that allows you to gain experience across multiple fields and eventually specialize in one field of interest.

A group sitting around a meeting table in discussion

Rotate between projects with different faculty each quarter based on project availability and your interest.