KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Joseph G. Altonji is the Thomas DeWitt Cuyler Professor of Economics at Yale University and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He previously held faculty positions at Columbia and Northwestern and served as a visiting professor at Princeton and Harvard. He is an elected fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an elected fellow and past president of the Society of Labor Economists and a past president of the Eastern Economic Association. He is a recipient of the IZA Prize in Labor Economics and of the Society of Labor Economists' Jacob Mincer Award for lifetime contributions in the field of labor economics.
​
Altonji specializes in labor economics and applied econometrics. His interests include labor market fluctuations, labor supply, consumption behavior, the economics of education, economic links among family members, race and gender in the labor market, wage determination, and econometric methods. His current research focuses on the role of families and schools in inequality, dynamic models of earnings, marriage, and family income, the effects of undergraduate field of study and graduate field of study on labor major outcomes, the costs of college majors, long term trends in the gender gap in the earnings of college graduates, and the use of selection on observed variables to address selection on unobserved variables.
​
Altonji has served as a consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and on a number of advisory panels, including the NAS/NRC Committee on National Statistics, the NAS/NRC Panel on Measuring Discrimination, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology STEM Undergraduate Education Working Group, the NSF Social, Behavior and Economic Sciences Advisory Committee, and the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee.
Marianne Bertrand is the Chris P. Dialynas Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She is a Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Center for Economic Policy Research, and the Institute for the Study of Labor.
​
Professor Bertrand is an applied micro-economist whose research covers the fields of labor economics, corporate finance, and development economics. Her research in these areas has been published widely, including numerous research articles in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review, and the Journal of Finance.
​
Professor Bertrand is a Co-Director of Chicago Booth’s Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation and the Director of the Inclusive Economy Lab at the University of Chicago Urban Labs. Professor Bertrand also served as co-editor of the American Economic Review.
​
She has received several awards and honors, including the 2004 Elaine Bennett Research Prize, awarded by the American Economic Association to recognize and honor outstanding research in any field of economics by a woman at the beginning of her career, and the 2012 Society of Labor Economists’ Rosen Prize for Outstanding Contributions to Labor Economics.
​
Bertrand is a Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Center for Economic Policy Research, and the Institute for the Study of Labor. She is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Econometric Society, as well as an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.​​
​
INVITED SPEAKERS
Natelie Bau is a Professor of Economics and holds a joint appointment with the department of public policy. She has held positions at the University of Toronto and the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She has published papers in leading economics journals, including the Journal of Political Economy and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Her research spans a variety of topics in development and educational economics, including the effects of cultural traditions on economic decision-making and the industrial organization of educational markets.
​​
​
Isaac Sorkin is an Associate Professor of Economics (with tenure) at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
His research lies at the intersection of labor economics and macroeconomics, with a focus on questions about worker mobility, firm amenities, labor market power, and the long-run effects of policy. His work combines theoretical insights with empirical analysis to better understand how workers and firms interact in modern labor markets.
His research has been published in leading economics journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, and the American Economic Review. His influential work includes contributions on topics such as firm ranking, labor market search, inequality dynamics, and Bartik instruments.
Professor Sorkin is a recipient of the Sloan Research Fellowship and the 2026 Society of Labor Economists’ Rosen Prize for Outstanding Early Career Contributions in Labor Economics and has received multiple awards for both research and teaching. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Political Economy and Econometrica (starting in July 2026).
Heather Sarsons is an economist with research interests in labor, personnel, and behavioral economics. Much of her work focuses on understanding how norms, stereotypes, and biases influence labor market outcomes and inequality.
Prior to joining Booth, Sarsons was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto's GATE Institute and the U of T Economics Department.
​
Sarsons received a PhD in economics from Harvard, and a BA in economics from The University of British Columbia. While pursuing her PhD, she was also a visiting student at the London School of Economics.
Boya Distinguished Professor, Professor of Economics
China Center of Economic Research, National School of Development
Peking University
Junjian Yi is a Boya Distinguished Professor at Peking University, a Professor of Economics at the National School of Development, Chairman for the Academic Committee, Director of the Center for Future Economy (CFE), and Co-Investigator of the Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS). He also serves as the Executive Editor of China Economic Quarterly and Co-Editor of Journal of Health Economics. His research interests focus on health economics, economics of artificial intelligence, human capital, labor and population economics, development economics, econometrics, and behavioral economics. His research has been published in top international academic journals across economics, management, demography, and public health, including Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Management Science, Demography, Lancet, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, among others.
​
​
​
​​
​
​
​
​