Jonathan Morduch

Jonathan Morduch ( born October 3, 1963) is an American economist whose specialist area is in the field of development economics and especially of microfinance. Since 2006, Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. In addition, he is the Managing Director of the Financial Access Initiative, a US-based research consortium devoted to the question dealing how the financial sector could support poor households in terms of their financial needs better.

Training

In May 1985, Morduch received an A. B. (Honors ) in Economics from Brown University, where he also won the Lamport Prize for International Understanding in Economics. During his third year he spent a year studying at the London School of Economics. Following his Bachelor Morduch worked from 1985 to 1986 as a research assistant in the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of the World Bank. Thereafter moved Morduch at Harvard University, which he in November 1991 a Ph.D. awarded for his thesis "Risk and Welfare in Developing Countries" ( Risk and Welfare in Developing Countries). During this time, Morduch also conducted research in the areas of public finance and labor markets.

Professional career

After receiving his Ph.D Morduch Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economics at Harvard University, a post which was he held until 1995. However, the academic year 1994-1995 he spent as a visiting professor at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. From 1991 to 1995 he took parallel to his job at Harvard University also true research applications at the Institute for Policy Reform ( 1993) and in the framework of the Research Group Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector, University of Maryland. In July 1995 he was promoted from Harvard University associate professor before he became an associate professor at New York University (NYU ) in 1998. Prior to this, worked Morduch the Food Research Institute at Stanford University (1995, 1996), the Harvard Institute for International Development (1996-1998 ) and as a National Fellow of the Hoover Institution (1997-1998).

After his change careers at NYU Morduch worked as a researcher and lecturer at the Center for International Studies at Princeton University (1998-2000), a visiting professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University (2000) and at the University of Tokyo ( 2002-2003). In September 2006 was Morduchs transport by the NYU professor. In 2008 he also took over as Managing Director of a leading position within the Financial Access Initiative, founded in 2006, a body of research that deals with problems in the field of microfinance.

Published in 2005, Morduch Beatriz Armendáriz de Aghion along with the book The Economics of Microfinance, which became a standard work of entry-level literature in the field of microfinance, for example, at Cambridge University.

Research

Jonathan Morduchs research is preoccupied since the late 1990s with microfinance, in particular the role of banking in the development of economics and the role of banks as microfinance institutions. In addition, Morduch has also done research on other topics, eg the economic consequences of gender discrimination, the importance of income distribution for consumption and economic growth and the consequences of price liberalization.

The database IDEAS According economics belongs Morduch, among others, under the criteria " research output " and " quotations" for the 5% of the most prolific economists. His research articles with the most citations is "Income Smoothing and Consumption Smoothing " (1995). The Université libre de Bruxelles in 2008 awarded him an honorary doctorate.