Successful candidates will report to Koichiro Ito, Associate Professor at University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. Research projects will focus on evaluating various energy and environmental policies in the US, Japan, China, India, Chile, and other countries by using a variety of methods such as randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental research design, and structural estimation.
Applicants must have completed a Bachelor’s degree by June 2023 and have strong quantitative and programming skills. Candidates with research experience are strongly preferred, especially those with experience in Stata, R, Python or Matlab. The ideal candidate would begin on July 1, 2023 and work for EPIC for one or two years before applying to graduate school in Economics or another quantitative social science. EPIC offers competitive salary and employee benefits.
Responsibilities
- Under limited direction, performs complex lab and/or research-related duties and tasks;
- Collects, records and analyzes data;
- Conducts literature reviews;
- Participates in writing reports and manuscripts;
- Ensures compliance with institutional, state, and federal regulatory policies, procedures, directives, and mandates;
- Trains and oversees the work of research support personnel;
- Transcribing and coding data; developing data collection instruments;
- Presenting research findings at staff meetings, seminars, and scientific conferences;
- Assisting with building databases;
- Recruiting and scheduling research subjects.
Koichiro Ito is an Associate Professor at Harris School of Public Policy at University of Chicago. He received a BA from Kyoto University, an MA from University of British Columbia, and a PhD from UC Berkeley. Prior to joining University of Chicago, he was a SIEPR Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and an Assistant Professor at Boston University.
His research interests lie at the intersection of environmental and energy economics, industrial organization, and public economics. These include analyses of how consumers respond to nonlinear pricing, dynamic pricing, and rebate programs in electricity markets, how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation affects their economics decisions, how firms strategically react to attribute-based regulation such as fuel economy standards, how firms respond to dynamic incentives in sequential forward markets in wholesale electricity markets, and how much people in China value air quality. His research uses a variety of methods including randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental designs, and structural estimation to address policy relevant questions in energy and environmental economics.
He is a recipient of the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities and the Nikkei Prize for his book, The Power of Data Analysis: How to Approach Causality, published by Kobunsha in April 2017. The original book was published in Japanese and then has been translated to Korean and Taiwanees.
Professor Ito is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Faculty Affiliate at the E2e Project, a Faculty Fellow at Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a Fellow at the International Growth Centre, a Research Fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, and a Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Economics at Kyoto University.