Qawi Rucker is a master’s student studying economics at Howard University. His academic areas of interest are urban economics, international economics, microeconomics, macroeconomics, monetary policy, and economic inequality. After receiving his degree, he plans to build institutions that will cater to the needs of Black people both in the United States and abroad, and hopes to become a professor of economics after continuing his education.
Expert Type: Scholar
Ezgi Kurt
Ezgi Kurt is an assistant professor of economics at Bentley University and a 2024 AEA summer economics fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Kurt’s research agenda is centered on understanding the diverse effects of fiscal and monetary policies on firms, with a particular emphasis on the interplay between corporate tax policy and the efficacy of monetary policy. Kurt has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Davis.
Natalia Luka
Natalia Luka was a Dissertation Scholar at Equitable Growth from 2023-2024.
Natalila Luka is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Sociology, studying economic sociology, organizations, and technology. Her research uses mixed methods to study corporations as sites of broader changes in the economy, with a particular interest in understanding the tensions between shareholder and stakeholder capitalism. Her dissertation studies workplace protests (employee activism) in U.S. corporations from the 1960s to the present. Nedzhvetskaya is a founding member of the nonprofit Collective Action in Tech, which hosts the largest public archive of protests in the technology industry. Her research on the tech industry has been featured in The Guardian, WIRED, MIT Technology Review, NBC News, NPR, The LA Times, and TIME, and has been funded by the Jain Family Institute, the Center for Technology, Society, and Policy, and the Berkeley Culture Initiative. Nedzhvetskaya earned a B.A. in social studies from Harvard College and an M.A. in sociology from Columbia University.
Sepideh Raei
Sepideh Raei is an assistant professor of economics at Utah State University and a 2023 AEA Summer Economics Fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Raei’s research focuses on the intersection of macroeconomics and public finance, with a long-term goal of advancing our understanding of how government policies and tax systems impact the behavior of households and firms, and can enhance their economic outcomes and welfare. Raei has a Ph.D. in economics from Arizona State University and a M.A. in economics from Simon Fraser University.
Gonçalo Costa
Gonçalo Pessa Costa was a Dissertation Scholar at Equitable Growth from 2022 – 2023.
Gonçalo Pessa Costa is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. In his dissertation, Costa studies the workings of housing rental markets, focusing on rent determination, landlords’ market power, and housing inequalities. As a Dissertation Scholar, he tested some of the predictions of his theoretical work through a quasi-natural experiment in New York City’s Stuyvesant Town, the largest rental apartment complex in the United States. His other research fields include labor economics, the history of economic thought, and the study of inequalities. Costa holds a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in economics from Lisbon’s Nova School of Business and Economics, and an M.Phil. in economics from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York.
Afrouz Jahromi
Afrouz Jahromi is an assistant professor of economics at Widener University. She was an American Economic Association summer economics fellow at Equitable Growth in 2022. Her research interests are in labor economics and microeconometrics, with a particular focus on understanding the distributional effects of having children on mothers’ incomes and the effects of job displacement on earnings among immigrants and nonimmigrants. Jahromi has a Ph.D. in economics from Temple University and an M.A. in economics from Allameh Tbataba’i University in Tehran, Iran.
Rachel Marie Brooks Atkins
Rachel Marie Brooks Atkins is an assistant professor of economics and finance at St. John’s University’s Tobin College of Business. Previously, she was a provost’s postdoctoral fellow at New York University and the 2021 American Economic Association summer economics fellow at Equitable Growth. Her research examines racial economic inequity in entrepreneurship, organizations, and high-tech industries. She also studies the effect of public policies on racial inequality in those contexts. Atkins earned a Ph.D. in public and urban policy from the New School. She previously earned an M.P.A from New York University, a master’s in government administration from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.S. in economics from West Chester University of Pennsylvania.
Sheridan Fuller
Sheridan Fuller was a Dissertation Scholar at Equitable Growth from 2021 – 2023.
Sheridan Fuller is a Ph.D. candidate in human development and social policy at Northwestern University. His research addresses U.S. social infrastructure’s potential to promote families’ well-being while acknowledging its pitfalls. He studies children’s and families’ interactions with income support programs, focusing on the effect of these programs on children’s long-term outcomes. Fuller’s research is motivated by two related questions. First, how do we better design U.S. social infrastructure to support children’s health and well-being? Second, do welfare policies that prevent families from accessing critical resources impact children’s developmental trajectory? His research addresses these questions by combining his professional policy experience working on income support programs with multidisciplinary training grounded in econometric methods and drawing on insights from political science and human development. His dissertation seeks to address these questions through historical and contemporary analysis of the public cash welfare system. Before beginning his doctoral work at Northwestern, Fuller worked on income support programs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a policy analyst and presidential management fellow and earned his Master of Public Policy and B.A. from the University of Virginia.
R. Jisung Park
R. Jisung Park is an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice. He is an economist whose work focuses on environmental economics, labor economics, and the interactions between climate change and economic inequality. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and M.Sc. degrees in environmental change and management and development economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
John Sabelhaus
John Sabelhaus was a Visiting Scholar at Equitable Growth from 2019 – 2020.
John Sabelhaus is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and adjunct research professor at the University of Michigan. He was a Visiting Scholar at Equitable Growth from 2019 – 2020. Prior to that, he was assistant director in the Division of Research and Statistics at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. His roles at the Federal Reserve Board included oversight of the Microeconomic Surveys and Household and Business Spending sections, including primary responsibility for the Survey of Consumer Finances. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve Board staff, Sabelhaus was a senior economist at the Investment Company Institute and chief of Long Term Modeling at the Congressional Budget Office, where he oversaw the development of an integrated micro/macro model of Social Security and Medicare. He also served as an adjunct in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland. Sabelhaus received his Ph.D., M.A., and B.A. in economics from the University of Maryland.