PD: Thats a fun answer. In grad school I was sort of interested in labor markets and how people accumulate the kinds of skills that they sell on the labor market, but there is a lot of different sub-questions under that. High Schools on College Preparation, I didnt take any math my first couple of years, but then I sort of happened to take an economics class by chance and I realized it was a way of answering a lot of the same social questions I was interested in studying in a more quantitative way. Its very practical and concrete, and not very abstract. : What inspired you to research into school choice and charter schools? Required fields are marked *. Im not sure all economists would agree with me, but I think our best evidence suggests theres actually pretty large returns to human capital investment at all different stages of the educational career, including the college attendance decision. I always kind of knew I liked school, so I knew I was probably going to go to grad school or something, but I didnt know exactly what. Research brief summarizing work by Abhay P. Aneja and Carlos F. Avenancio-Len. Could you begin by telling me about your background and how it helped shape your academic focus, and what experiences helped you find your passion for economics? Christopher Walters | Research UC Berkeley It was a pleasure to interview you. The questions that labor economists focus on are very intimately linked to actual, concrete measures of well-being in peoples livestheir wages, their employment outcomes, what their careers look like. I think because of that focus on those sorts of questions, labor is also, from a methodological perspective, a very practical field. So the combination of being attracted to the experimentalist, clean, and causal identification you get from lotteries with the opportunity to model peoples choices with the administrative data on who is and is not applying and what their backgrounds look like, is what led me to my work on that topic. Chris's age is 42. PD: So what made the question of Industry or Grad School clear to you? CW: Im not sure. Im referencing some research by Seth Zimmerman, whos an economist at the University of Chicago School of Business. : I think my choice to focus on labor instead of other subfields of economics is a combination of the set of questions you get to answer in labor and the sort of research philosophy of the field, which are linked to each other. Copyright UC Regents. Thats like an experimentalist view of research. In my graduate classes, readings, and recent work in top journals in this area, I got interested in the combination of choices and experiments that were on the frontier of the education literature. Social Security: An Answer for Developing Nations, Play-by-Play of Warren-care: Financing the Behemoth, Bernie Sanders Moral Crusade to Implement Medicare for All, Unbonded: Liz Truss and the collapse of trust in the British Parliament, LIV Golf: Startup Leagues and the Future of Sports. Dr. Walters received a BA in economics and philosophy from the University of Virginia in 2008 and a PhD in economics from MIT in 2013. That appealed to me as someone who had a little bit more math that I felt like I wasnt able to use in my history classes, so I just started taking more and went from there. Mailing Address: All rights reserved. Your email address will not be published. : Thats a fun answer. In 2008, he graduated with a BA in economics and philosophy from the University of Virginia and received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. His research focuses on the topics in labor economics and the economics of education, including early childhood programs, school effectiveness, and labor market discrimination. Faculty profiles | Department of Economics Im not sure all economists would agree with me, but I think our best evidence suggests theres actually pretty large returns to human capital investment at all different stages of the educational career, including the college attendance decision. I went into college thinking I was going to do more humanities-related disciplines. Walters is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Faculty Affiliate at the MIT School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative (SEII) and an affiliate of J-PAL North America. He received a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in 2012. Chris Walters | CEPR
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