Sendhil Mullainathan

Sendhil Mullainathan is an Indian- American economist who works as a professor of economics at Harvard University. Mullainathans scientific areas of interest lie in the field of behavioral economics, poverty, economics and research on public policy. He is also a founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and a former Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation.

Childhood and education

Sendhil Mullainathan was born in a small village in India and moved at the age of seven years to Los Angeles. After high school he attended from 1990 to 1993 Cornell University, from which he a BA received in computer science, economics and mathematics with the distinction magna cum laude. Thereafter, he moved to Harvard University, for his dissertation "Essays in Applied Microeconomics " 1998 ( Essays in Applied Microeconomics ) a Ph.D. awarded in economics. Doctor fathers of these were the renowned economist Drew Fudenberg, Lawrence Katz and Andrei Shleifer. During his studies at Harvard Mullainathan was awarded the Harvard University Merit Fellowship (1993-1996), as well as the Sumner Slichter Fellowship ( 1996-1997).

Professional career

After his Ph.D. Mullainathan went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT ), where he taught only as an Assistant Professor without Chair (1998-2000 ), then as the Mark Hyman Jr. Assistant Professor (2000-2002 ) and finally Associate Professor (2002-2004) and researched. Among the courses he taught Ph.D. belonged Macroeconomic theory, economics, and psychology, as well as corporate finance. In 2003, Mullainathan at MIT in collaboration with Professors Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a network that uses randomized controlled trials to verify the effectiveness of measures to combat poverty. In September 2004, Mullainathan accepted a position at his alma mater, Harvard University, where he was professor of economics. Following his interest in microfinance, Mullainathan, 2006 was next to Dean Karlan and Jonathan Morduch, a founder of the Financial Access Initiative, a research center at New York University to improve access to and use of financial services by poor households. Together with Schoar, Djankov, Shafir, Kling and Mullainathan 2008 Kremer founded the think tank Ideas42 to apply a behavioral science perspective on social policy problems. Since July 2011, Mullainathan is also Deputy Director of Research at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, a national authority, which is responsible for consumer protection as regards financial products.

In addition, Mullainathan research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a board member of the Bureau of Research in Economic Analysis of Development, Faculty Affiliate of the Center for International Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government (Harvard University), a researcher with the NPO Innovations for Poverty Action and a member of the Russell Sage Foundation Behavioral Economics Roundtable.

Research

According to the economics publication database IDEAS Mullainathan part in the overall ranking nearly to the top 1% ( rank 342). Even under criteria such as " number of publications " or " number of citations " Mullainathan heard clearly in the top 5 % of the economists included in the database. The most zitierteste Mullainathans article is titled "How Much Should We Trust Differences -in- Differences Estimates " (2002) and was co-authored with Marianne Bertrand, Esther Duflo and. In this article, Bertrand, Duflo and Mullainathan Difference -in- Difference Estimation (DID) analysis, an estimation method for causal relationships, and come to the conclusion that DID significantly underestimated the standard error of the estimated effect of the studied intervention in its conventional use. To address the autocorrelation problem, make Bertrand, Duflo and Mullainathan finally three solutions: a collapse of the data in the periods before and after the procedure, the use of a special covariance matrix or an adaptation of Randomisierungsinterferenz test methods.

The main research contributions Mullainathans whose academic importance is also reflected by their citation in the literature include the following addition:

In 2000 Bertrand, Luttmer and Mullainathan contributed to the network theory at by examining, on the basis of information about the language spoken at home, the question of whether to be surrounded by like -speaking people, the use of welfare stronger for individuals from groups with high average participation increases in social assistance programs. The reason for this study was the academic literature by pulling hypothesis that network effects would cause a culture of poverty. The study found that social networks have a strong influence on the use of social assistance and found evidence that networks actually support a culture of poverty.

2001 studied Mullainathan, and Bertrand whether respondents in surveys say what they really think. The results of their studies showed that the empirical literature, the skepticism of economists against subjective questions tend to be supported and that the use of subjective data is questionable in an econometric context, however, these subjective data may have utility as explanatory variables ( here would be to ensure that causality is not necessarily given ). Finally Mullainathans and Bertrand reported empirical studies suggest that subjective variables are useful in practice in order to explain differences in the behavior of different individuals.

Together with Bertrand and Mullainathan 2002 Mehta analyzed tunneling, ie the vertical exploitation indirectly owned companies in India. To this end, Bertrand, Mehta and Mullainathan developed an empirical method to estimate the extent of tunneling in companies. The application of this method to Indian companies showed a considerable degree of misappropriation, mostly the ownership accordingly and usually associated with non - operating profit.

In a 2004 article published examined Mullainathan, and Bertrand discrimination against minorities in the U.S. labor market. The results of the study showed that strongly suggests that ethnic discrimination is an important factor as to why African- Americans are less economically successful than other ethnic groups. Thus, the study could, for example, convincingly demonstrate that applicants regardless of qualification and gender with typical African-American names were fewer queries and this is not even changed if they improved the qualifications of a candidate group.

Awards

Throughout his career, Mullainathan has received numerous research grants, scholarship recipients and awards. The most important include the Sloan Foundation Fellowship (2001-2003), the MacArthur Fellowship of the MacArthur Foundation (2003-2008) and various research grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the, International Finance Corporation ( for Mullainathans work in the Financial Access Initiative ) the Rand Corporation and the National Science Foundation.