Fontana Visiting Professors

Christian Hellwig is Professor of Economics at the Toulouse School of Economics. He was previously Assistant and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his PhD from London School of Economics (2002). His research focuses on information and coordination problems in macroeconomics and finance. Recently his work shifted towards inequality, redistribution and optimal taxation. 

Dirk Krueger is the Walter H. And Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics. He also holds a secondary appointment at Wharton’s Finance department and is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and a Fellow of the European Economic Association. He is the editor of the International Economic Review, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Penn's Population Studies Center, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a Research Fellow at Netspar, and a Research Fellow at the Center for Financial Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt.

His research has focused on whether, how and to what extent risk, a central concern in macroeconomics, is shared across households or groups of households. The main risks that affect typical households are labor income risks (e.g., due to becoming unemployed), health, disability and mortality risks. Since the economic impact of these risks is potentially large the welfare impact of sharing their economic consequences can be substantial. His research in this area, which is located in the field of macroeconomics but has strong links to other fields of economics, especially public finance and labor economics, combines economic theory with empirical and computational methods to answer research questions that are of immediate policy relevance.

Yu Zheng is Professor of Economics at the School of Economics and Finance, Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on economic growth, development, and inequality, with particular emphasis on the role of micro-level heterogeneity in shaping aggregate outcomes. In her current work, she combines individual- and firm-level administrative data with survey data to examine how human capital and intangible capital influence aggregate productivity and inequality. Her research has been published in Econometrica, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, and the International Economic Review, among others. She is a Humboldt Experienced Research Fellow, and a former Leverhulme International Fellow and Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute.