Marianne Bertrand

Marianne Bertrand (* 1969 ) is a Belgian economist who specializes in applied microeconomics . The areas of labor economics , corporate finance and development economics are among her main research areas. Bertrand has been researching and teaching at the University of Chicago since 2000 , where she has held the Chris P. Dialynas Professorship for Economics since 2009 .

education

Marianne Bertrand was born in Belgium. After graduating from school, she attended the Université libre de Bruxelles from 1987 to 1992 , from which she received a license in econometrics in 1991 and a Maitrise in econometrics in 1992 . During her studies in Brussels, she taught undergraduate students in mathematics as well as major in econometrics (1989–1991) at the university. After completing her studies, she worked for a year at the Université libre de Bruxelles as a research assistant . She then moved to Harvard University in 1993 , where she received a Ph.D. awarded in economics.

Professional background

After her Ph.D. to a position as a left Bertrand 1998 Harvard Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at the Department of Economics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs of Princeton University to accept, where they remained until 2000th As an assistant professor at Princeton, she taught advanced macroeconomics in the MPA program and in labor economics in the Ph.D. program. Then Bertrand moved to the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago . Here she was initially also an assistant professor, before being promoted to associate professor in 2002 and to full professor without a chair in 2003. In 2006 she finally received the Fred G. Steingraber-AT Kearney Professorship for Economics, which she gave up in 2009 in favor of the Chris P. Dialynas Professorship for Economics. Bertrand was a Neubauer Family Faculty Fellow from 2009 to 2011 and a Richard N. Rosett Faculty Fellow from 2011 to 2012. In Chicago, Bertrand teaches microeconomics, competitive strategies and the role of the company outside the market.

In addition, Bertrand is a Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) for Corporate Finance and Labor Market Studies , a Research Fellow of the Institute for the Future of Work (IZA) and a Research Fellow of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) for Development Economics , Labor Economics and Public Policy.

research

According to the economic publications database IDEAS , Bertrand is among the 2% of the most research-intensive economists in the overall ranking (344th place). In terms of criteria such as "number of citations" or "number of magazine pages", Bertrand clearly belongs to the top 5% of the economists recorded in the database. Bertrand's most frequently cited article is entitled " How Much Should We Trust Differences-in-Differences Estimates " (2002) and was co- authored with Sendhil Mullainathan and Esther Duflo . In this article, Bertrand, Duflo, and Mullainathan analyze Difference-in-Difference Estimation (DID), a causal relationship estimation method, and conclude that DID, in its conventional use , significantly underestimates the standard error of the estimated effect of the intervention under study. In order to counter the autocorrelation problem, Bertrand, Duflo and Mullainathan finally propose three solutions: a coincidence of the data in periods before and after the procedure, the use of a special covariance matrix or an adaptation of the randomization interference test methods.

The main research contributions by Bertrand, the academic importance of which is reflected by their citation in the specialist literature, also include the following:

In 2000, Bertrand, Luttmer and Mullainathan contributed to network theory by using information about the language spoken at home to investigate whether being surrounded by people of the same language made the use of welfare more effective for individuals in groups with high average participation in Social assistance programs increased. The reason for this study was the hypothesis that pervades the academic literature 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.

In 2001, Mullainathan and Bertrand examined whether respondents say what they really think in surveys . The results of their studies showed that the empirical literature tends to support the skepticism of economists about subjective questions and that the use of subjective data in an econometric context is questionable, although these subjective data can be useful as explanatory variables (but care should be taken here that causality is not necessarily given). Finally, Mullainathan's and Bertrand's empirical studies indicated that subjective variables are useful in practice in explaining differences in behavior among individuals.

Together with Mehta and Mullainathan, Bertrand analyzed tunneling in 2002, i. H. the vertical exploitation of indirectly owned companies, in India. For this purpose, Bertrand, Mehta and Mullainathan developed an empirical method to estimate the extent of tunneling in companies. Applying this method to Indian companies resulted in a significant amount of theft, mostly related to ownership and mostly related to non-operating profit.

In 2003, Bertrand and Antoinette Schoar analyzed whether, and if so, how individual managers influence the behavior and performance of companies. The results of their study support the assumption that differences in the leadership style of top managers can be blamed for a large part of the differences in corporate strategies (investments, financing, etc.) and that the performance of a company depends heavily on the leadership style of the top managers . The authors were also able to find indications that a positive influence of a manager's leadership style on company performance is generally associated with higher pay and occurs more frequently in companies where the ownership structure is highly concentrated (e.g. family businesses). Finally, Bertrand and Schoar succeeded in demonstrating that older managers are on average more cautious with investments and finances than younger ones, and that MBA graduates often prefer more aggressive corporate strategies.

In an article published in 2004, Bertrand and Mullainathan examined discrimination against minorities in the US labor market. The study's findings strongly suggested that ethnic discrimination is a major factor in why African-Americans are less economically successful than other ethnic groups. For example, the study was able to convincingly demonstrate that applicants with typically Afro-American names, regardless of qualification and gender, received fewer queries and that this did not change even if the qualifications of this group of applicants improved.

Marianne Bertrand's publications can be found in a number of renowned economic publications, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics , Journal of Political Economy , Journal of Finance and the American Economic Review , of which she has been co-editor since July 2011. Bertrand had previously worked as co-editor of the Economic Journal from 2004 to 2005 , as well as Associate Editor of the journals Finance Letters (2003–2007), Journal of the European Economic Association (2003–2004), Economic Journal (2006–2011) , American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (2007-2011) and the Quarterly Journal of Economics (2003-2011).

Awards

Marianne Bertrand has received a number of awards, research and study grants over the course of her career. These include the Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2012), the Society of Labor Economists ' Rosen Prize for Outstanding Contributions to Labor Economics (2011), Excellence in Refereeing Awards from the Quarterly Journal of Economics (2011) and the American Economic Review (2009), the Elaine Benett Research Prize (2005), fellowships from the Society of Labor Economists (2012), the Florence Gould Foundation (2005–2006), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2003–2005) and the Centel Foundation (2001–2002) and scholarships from Harvard University, the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (1993–1997) and the Belgian American Educational Foundation (1993–1994).

literature

Article (selection)

Bertrand, Marianne, Sendhil Mullainathan (2004): Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination , American Economic Review, Vol. 94, No. 4, pp. 991-1013.
Bertrand, Marianne, Antoinette Schoar (2003): Managing with Style: The Effect of Managers on Firm Policies , The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 118, No. 4, pp. 1169–1208.
Bertrand, Marianne, Paras Mehta, Sendhil Mullainathan (2002): Ferreting Out Tunneling: An Application To Indian Business Groups , The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 117, No. 1, pp. 121-148.
Bertrand, Marianne, Sendhil Mullainathan (2001): Do People Mean What They Say? Implications for Subjective Survey Data , American Economic Review, Vol. 91, No. 2, pp. 67-72.
Bertrand, Marianne, Erzo FP Luttmer, Sendhil Mullainathan (2000): Network Effects And Welfare Cultures , The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 115, No. 3, pp. 1019-1055.