Suresh Naidu quoted in The Daily Princetonian
Economics Professor Ellora Derenoncourt discusses new center on inequality
After earning a Ph.D. in economics at Harvard, Ellora Derenoncourt joined Princeton for her postdoc in 2019, then joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. This year, she joined the Princeton Department of Economics and the Industrial Relations section as an Assistant Professor of Economics. She is creating a research center within the department that will focus on economic inequality. Her research focuses on labor policy, with emphasis on the racial wealth gap and minimum wage policy....
... And he’s an economist at Columbia, Suresh Naidu, still producing really awesome work. And he said — he looked at it, he said, “Have you heard of economics? This is what we do.” And I said, “No, it’s not. Everyone who does econ, they do a certain kind of job, and I’m not interested in that.” And he said, “No, no, no. Economics is a tool kit. And you can apply it to whatever you want. And we have the best — I mean, you can argue this — the most rigorous tools in quantitative social science for answering questions. But as long as you use the tools right, people will respect you, no matter what the question is. And so you can kind of turn this around and ask questions that align with the needs of communities who are marginalized and use economics as a tool for social justice.” So that kind of blew my mind....