Harris Welcomes New Faculty for 2019-2020

Six new faculty will join the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy in Academic Year 2019-2020, extending the school’s strength, breadth, and depth of expertise in the fields of political economy, analytical politics, conflict, health, and macroeconomics.

The additions of Professor Scott Gehlbach, Associate Professor Joshua Gottlieb, and Assistant Professors Daniel Moskowitz, Carolin Pflueger, Raul Sanchez de la Sierra, and Adam Zelizer increase the number of Harris Public Policy faculty to 54. 

“With the addition of such talented scholars to our faculty roster this year, Harris has amplified our ability to advance policy based on the latest tools of social science and data analytics,” said Katherine Baicker, dean and Emmett Dedmon Professor, Harris Public Policy. “These scholars are each making major contributions to informing evidence-based policy, and will bring vital resources to policymakers, colleagues, and students here at Harris.” 

Harris has added 21 faculty since 2015, including four tenure-track scholars who joined last academic year, expanding the school’s critical mass in fields such as energy and environmental economics, health, and criminal justice. Nobel laureate Roger Myerson was appointed the David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies at Harris in November 2018, further augmenting Harris’ impact in conflict resolution.     

Background on the new 2019-2020 Harris faculty follows:  

Scott Gehlbach, Professor, Political Economy

Scott Gehlbach is a specialist in the politics of nondemocratic regimes. A political economist and comparativist, his work is motivated by the contemporary and historical experience of Russia, Ukraine, and other post-communist states. Known for employing a wide range of methods in his research, Gehlbach has contributed to graduate education through his widely used textbook Formal Models of Domestic Politics. He has a joint UChicago appointment at Harris and the Department of Political Science. For the 2019–20 academic year, he is on leave from UChicago and will be a visiting professor in the economics department at Sciences Po. 

Prior to coming to Chicago, Gehlbach was faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for sixteen years. He has at various times been affiliated with both the New Economic School and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, two Fulbright-Hays Fellowships, and many other grants. Gehlbach received his PhD in political science and economics from the University of California–Berkeley.   

Joshua Gottlieb, Associate Professor, Health Care 

Joshua Gottlieb’s research focuses on the economics of the health care system, including the organization of insurance markets, physician behavior, and administrative costs.  Gottlieb also conducts research in public finance, urban economics, and labor economics more broadly. His research focuses on questions directly relevant to public policy, and he was instrumental in developing and promoting a novel property tax scheme, which influenced housing policy in British Columbia.

Gottlieb completed his PhD in economics at Harvard University in 2012. He was previously an Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and Co-Editor of the Journal of Public Economics. He will teach Health Care Markets and Regulation in the Spring Quarter.  

Daniel Moskowitz, Assistant Professor, Analytical Politics

Daniel Moskowitz studies how the media and electoral institutions shape the behavior of voters and elite actors, and assesses the consequences of these institutions on accountability and political representation. In particular, his research focuses on electoral politics, redistricting, media and politics, partisan polarization, the U.S. Congress, and political parties.

Before joining Harris, Moskowitz received his PhD from Harvard University and BA from Grinnell College. Prior to graduate school, he worked at the Brookings Institution and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in the Department of the Treasury. He is slated to teach Statistics for Data Analysis and Data Analytics in the Autumn Quarter.  

Carolin Pflueger, Assistant Professor, Macroeconomics

Carolin Pflueger’s research lies at the intersection of macroeconomics and finance, with a particular focus on understanding the fiscal and monetary policy drivers of bond markets. On the theory side, she has proposed a new integrated model of macroeconomic dynamics for stocks and bonds.  On the empirical side she has worked on developing a new measure of risk appetite for the macro-economy. She is also interested in understanding how the interdependence of fiscal and monetary policy theory can raise governments’ cost of borrowing, especially in emerging markets.

Pflueger received her PhD in Business Economics from Harvard in 2012 and was an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of British Columbia from 2012 until 2019. She has held visiting positions at UChicago’s Becker-Friedman Institute, Stanford University, MIT Sloan, Brown University, and the San Francisco Federal Reserve. Pflueger is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). She is scheduled to teach Financial Investments in Public Policy in the Autumn Quarter. 

Raul Sanchez de la Sierra, Assistant Professor, Development Economics

Raul Sanchez de la Sierra’s research focus areas include development economics, political economy, and conflict. He conducts most of his research in areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where the central state is especially weak. There, he looks at the organization of society, the economics and psychology of armed groups, the emergence of state functions, and the economics of organized corruption working closely with these actors, while also gathering detailed data for statistical analysis.

Sánchez de la Sierra earned his PhD in economics from Columbia University in 2014. He holds an MS in development economics from Sciences-Po, Paris and a BS in economics from Carlos III Madrid, in conjunction with the Ludwig-Maximilians Universitaet of Munich. Prior to joining Harris, Sánchez de la Sierra was Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley. He is a research fellow at the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), the International Growth Centre (IGC), the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL) – Conflict and Violence Initiative, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) – Political Economy, a distinguished fellow at the Center for Economic Studies ifo (CESifo) – Applied Microeconomics, and an alumni of the CIFAR Azrieli global scholars program and the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. 

Adam Zelizer, Assistant Professor, Analytical Politics

Adam’s research is focused on legislative behavior. His research examines how legislators make decisions – for example, how they acquire expertise from policy research and influence one another through deliberation – and the effects of individual decision-making processes on policy outcomes. One goal of this research is to figure out which legislative processes work, in the sense of leading to more informed, effective, and broadly-supported public policies, and which do not. 

Prior to his appointment, Zelizer was most recently a Postdoctoral Researcher (Instructor) at Harris during which he taught Analytical Politics II and Field Experiments for Public Policy. He received his PhD in Political Science from Columbia University in 2018. He also holds a BA in Political Economy from Columbia University. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, Cato Institute, Open Society Foundations, and Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. He is scheduled to teach Analytical Politics II: Political Institutions in the Winter Quarter and Political Economy III: Testing the Theories of Political Institutions for the PhD program next year.