Open Curriculum

MINDY OSWALD

Faculty specializing in sophisticated analysis are propelling Brown’s economics department to the top tier.

BY NOEL RUBINTON ’77

DATA DRIVEN

Educational opportunity. Economic mobility. Global warming. Mortality risks and planning for the future. Political polarization and social media. Interest rates and bank lending. How cellphone use can help determine a person’s creditworthiness.

These are just a few of the subjects of recent research from Brown’s growing group of data-driven economists. “There is a revolution in data,” said Brown economics department chair Anna Aizer.

The explosion of access to Big Data worldwide has profoundly affected research in many academic fields, economics included. “We have a faculty doing work that is on the frontier,” Aizer said, and that work is helping raise the profile and impact of Brown’s department. One professor, for instance, is studying the allocation of public housing and collaborating with housing councils in London to implement a better system; another is helping cities around the United States find ways to reduce income inequality.

Building on Brown’s long-time strengths in economics—including development, growth, and game theory— the University has in the past six years recruited an enhanced cadre of faculty in applied microeconomics. That’s the area most closely tied to data-intense research, and is a branch of economics that takes theories and methodologies and applies them to questions of individual behavior and societal outcomes. By examining topics with real-world relevance, Aizer said, “Many of these projects get at fundamental questions of opportunity and well-being. This research has the potential to change policy, both here and abroad, because the results reveal clear policy implications.”

The department got a major boost in April 2019 with the announcement of a $25 million gift, its largest ever, from Orlando Bravo ’92, a private equity investor. More than half of the gift from the Bravo Family Foundation, $15 million, will launch the Orlando Bravo Center for Economic Research so the department can expand and enhance its research and training, and the other $10 million will fund two new endowed chairs and spur faculty recruitment.