News
CEQ Institute Data Center Receives NSF Grant Copy
May 25, 2018
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
Tulane University has been awarded a two-year grant by the National Science Foundation in the amount of $241,814 to support the CEQ Institute Data Center on Fiscal Policy, Poverty, and Inequality. With Nora Lustig as the Principal Investigator and Sean Higgins as a co-PI, the project will develop a state of the art visualization tool as well as software modules to make the CEQ Institute data easily accessible and useful to researchers, policy makers, and the public.
Please click here to read the description of the grant.
UNDP appoints Luis Felipe López-Calva to Leadership Team
June 6, 2018
New York, USA
The CEQ Institute wishes to congratulate Advisory Board member Luis Felipe López-Calva for his appointment as director of UNDP Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean.
From UNDP announcement:
Mr. Luis López-Calva is currently the Practice Manager of the Poverty and Equity Global Practice (Europe and Central Asia) at the World Bank. He was the co-director and lead author of the World Development Report 2017 on “Governance and the Law”. He was previously Lead Economist and Regional Poverty Advisor in the Bank’s Europe and Central Asia Region, and Lead Economist at the Poverty, Equity and Gender Unit in the Latin America and Caribbean PREM Directorate, also at The World Bank. From 2007-2010, he served as Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean at UNDP in New York.
Mr. López-Calva has been Associate Editor of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities and he is Fellow of the Human Development and Capabilities Association. He has also been President of the Network on Inequality and Poverty in the Latin America and Caribbean Economic Association. His research interests focus on labor markets, poverty and inequality, institutions and microeconomics of development. He has presented his research at top institutions including: Harvard University, Stanford University, University of California-Berkeley, University of California-San Diego, and the OECD Development Center. He holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from Boston University, as well as a Master’s and a PhD in Economics from Cornell University.
CEQ Institute Data Center Receives NSF Grant
May 25, 2018
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
Tulane University has been awarded a two-year grant by the National Science Foundation in the amount of $241,814 to support the CEQ Institute Data Center on Fiscal Policy, Poverty, and Inequality. With Nora Lustig as the Principal Investigator and Sean Higgins as a co-PI, the project will develop a state of the art visualization tool as well as software modules to make the CEQ Institute data easily accessible and useful to researchers, policy makers, and the public.
Please click here to read the description of the grant.
CEQ’s Ali Enami receives Schloss Prize
April 19, 2018
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
About Schloss Prize
Mr. Lawrence M. v. D. Schloss, 1976 graduate from Tulane University and member of the Board of Tulane, has endowed the Lawrence M. v. D. Schloss Prize for Excellence in Economics. “The Schloss Prize is to be offered to outstanding full professors, associate professors, or assistant professors, or graduate or undergraduate students, who do outstanding work in the Department of Economics.”
Mr. Schloss has had a distinguished career in the financial services industry. Following his 1976 graduation from Tulane, he earned an MBA from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania in 1978. He then joined Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ) in 1978 as an investment banker, and during his 22 years at DLJ rose to become Chairman of DLJ’s Merchant Banking Division. Upon the acquisition of DLJ by Credit Suisse in 2000, he became the Global Head of CSFB Private Equity. In 2010 he was appointed New York City’s Deputy Comptroller for Pensions and the Chief Investment Officer and Trustee of the New York City pension funds, whose assets grew from $100 billion to $145 billion under his leadership. He was named 2012 CIO of The Year – Large Public Pension Funds by Institutional Investor. Most recently, Mr. Schloss was the President of Angelo, Gordon & Co. In addition to serving on the Board of Tulane, Mr. Schloss is the Vice Chair of the New York Police and Fire Widows’ Fund and the Children’s Benefit Fund, and he has served on the boards of directors of numerous public and private companies, including Girls Who Invest.
There are two recipients of the 2017-2018 Schloss Prize. Patrick Button is the faculty recipient of the Schloss Prize for Excellence in Research. Ali Enami is the graduate student recipient of the Schloss Prize for Excellence in Research. Each will receive a cash award of $2500.
About Ali Enami
Ali Enami is a graduate student in the Department of Economics, finishing his dissertation in the Department’s doctoral program and graduating with a Ph.D. in economics. He received a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from K.N. Toosi University of Technology in Iran Economics, an M.B.A. from Malek-Ashtar University of Technology in Iran, an M.A. in economics from the University of Akron, and an M.S. in economics from Tulane University. His dissertation is entitled “Analyzing the Socio-economic Impacts of Fiscal Policies: Educational Attainment, Interstate Migration, Inequality, and Poverty.”
Even with the demands of coursework and a dissertation, Ali has made outstanding research contributions. He has already published several articles, including:
* “Does Unrestricted Public School Choice Increase Racial Segregation? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in New Orleans”, in Applied Economics Quarterly
* “Do Government Subsidies to Low-income Individuals Affect Interstate Migration? Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Care Reform”, in Regional Science and Urban Economics
* “Balancing the Ticket While Appealing to the Base: The Game Theory Behind Mitt Romney’s Selection of Paul Ryan as his Presidential Running Mate”, in Party Politics
* “Do Refugee-immigrants Affect International Trade? Evidence from the World’s Largest Refugee Case”, in Journal of Policy Modeling.
Ali has also published several book chapters in Commitment to Equity Handbook – A Guide to Estimating the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty (Brookings Institution Press and CEQ Institute), edited by Nora Lustig:
* “Analytic Foundations: Measuring the Redistributive Impact of Taxes and Transfers”
* “Measuring the Redistributive Impact of Taxes and Transfers in the Presence of Reranking”
* “Measuring the Effectiveness of Taxes and Transfers in Fighting Inequality and Poverty”
* “An Application of the CEQ Effectiveness Indicators: The Case of Iran.”
Ali has a number of additional research projects underway, including several that have received grant support. He expects to continue his work on inequality and poverty with Nora Lustig, funding by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
More details on Ali’s activities can be found on his website.
The Department of Economics selection committee (Nora Lustig, Jon Pritchett, and James Alm) was unanimous in recommending that Patrick and Ali be the 2017-2018 recipients of the Lawrence M. v. D. Schloss Prize for Excellence in Economics.
The Department of Economics is very grateful to Mr. Schloss for his generous and ongoing support, which has made possible the recognition of Nora’s accomplishments. Previous Schloss Prize winners are Marco Castaneda (2009), Jay Shimshack (2010), Stefano Barbieri (2011), Keith Finlay (2012), Douglas Nelson (2012), Alan Barreca (2013), Jon Pritchett (2013), Doug Harris (2014), Sean Higgins (2014), and James Alm (2015), Nora Lustig (2016), and Jon Pritchett (2017).
CEQ Institute and the World Bank sign MOU
February 28, 2018
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
On February 28, 2018, the CEQ Institute at Tulane University and the World Bank signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on common objectives. The forms of collaboration include data-sharing, re-estimates of studies applying new international poverty lines, advising and training, and knowledge sharing. The data-sharing component will significantly increase the country coverage in the CEQ Institute’s Data Center on Fiscal Redistribution. Through the assessment of the impact of taxation and social spending on inequality and poverty, the CEQ Institute aims to provide a roadmap for governments, multilateral institutions, and non-governmental organizations in their efforts to build more equitable societies.
CEQ Institute partners with WID.world
Nora Lustig’s visit to the Paris School of Economics in May and June 2017, and her discussions with Professor Thomas Piketty and his colleagues, resulted in a new partnership between the CEQ Institute and the WID.world project to produce Distributional National Accounts (DINA) in a number of low and middle income countries. With this partnership, we will join forces to enlarge the geographical coverage of countries with DINA and enhance both projects’ ability to reach out to increasingly broader audiences. For the CEQ Institute, this is a unique opportunity to assess how country-specific results might be affected when primary incomes, taxes and public spending are scaled up to match their values in the country’s National Accounts. The partnership will also allow us to identify the data challenges that are particular to low and middle income countries, and suggest ways in which they could be overcome. We shall be able to assess further whether more progressive income and wealth taxes could be transformed into benefits -in cash and in kind- for the poorest.