Spring 2000 One-world dilemmas New faculty Bullets & bytes, Recent faculty honors, Promotions to tenure     All issues This issue only Help   Soundings is a publication of the School of Humanities and Social Science at MIT Comments and questions to www-shss@mit.edu	Introducing new faculty David Autor Kanchan Chandra Esther Duflo Xavier Gabaix Jonathan Rodden
	The faculty roster of the School of Humanities and Social Science is expanding with an infusion of new talent and expertise. In the last issue of soundings we introduced half the new faces in our School. The other half is profiled here. David Autor, a new assistant professor in the Economics Department, specializes in labor economics and public policy. He obtained a BA in psychology with a minor in computer science from Tufts University in 1989 and a PhD in public policy from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government last year. His research combines first-hand observation with economic modeling and econometric analysis to examine emerging issues in labor markets. Autor is in the midst of two research programs, one on job training and the labor market for temporary workers, the other on computerization and the growth of earnings inequality in the US and abroad. He is also a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research affiliate of the Joint Center for Poverty Research. Prior to obtaining his PhD, Autor directed efforts to teach computer skills to economically disadvantaged children and adults in the US and South Africa.
	Kanchan Chandra will join the Political Science Department as an assistant professor in Fall 2000. She will obtain a PhD in government from Harvard University this year. She specializes in comparative politics, with a focus on ethnic politics; political parties and electoral systems; democracy and democratization; and South Asian politics. Her dissertation, entitled "Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: A Comparative Study," examines the conditions under which ethnic parties gain support from their target ethnic constituencies. She is a recipient of fellowships from the SSRC MacArthur Program in International Peace and Security (1996-1998) and the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, where she is a Fellow this year.
	Esther Duflo, a new assistant professor in the Economics Department, specializes in development economics. She obtained a Diplome D'etude Aprofondie in economics from the DELTA research center in Paris in 1995, graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1997, and completed a PhD in economics from MIT last spring. Her research explores the impact of women's education, earnings and political participation in developing countries and the importance of credit constraints in developing economies. Duflo is beginning a study of the determinants of tax deferred accounts participation. She is a recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation graduate dissertation fellowship and was selected to participate in the Review of Economic Studies Tour last spring.
	Xavier Gabaix, a new assistant professor in the Department of Economics, works on models of "bounded rationality." He received an MA in mathematics from the Ecole Normale Supırieure in Paris in 1993 and a PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1999. His mathematical models aim to predict people's decisions and beliefs when they face complicated situations. Applications include financial decision-making, savings behavior and contract design. He also works on the applications of related ideas to explain and predict stock market and exchange rate volatility.
	Jonathan Rodden, a new assistant professor in the Political Science Department, specializes in comparative political economy. He obtained a BA from the University of Michigan in 1993 and spent the 1993-94 academic year on a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Leipzig, Germany. He received his PhD in political science in 1999 from Yale University. His research and teaching interests focus on political and economic institutions. Specifically, his current work explores federalism and decentralized systems of public finance around the world, a project combining theory, quantitative evidence and case studies. He also is editing a book on fiscal decentralization and budget deficits in cooperation with the World Bank. Additional research and teaching interests include German politics, European unification, elections and globalization.
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Copyright © 2000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Spring 2000