Welcome Our New Faculty - Fall 2026

David Van Dijcke

David Van Dijcke is an econometrician who develops methods for causal inference when outcomes are complex objects — distributions, networks, or images — rather than single numbers. His work draws on optimal transport and functional statistics to extend workhorse designs such as regression discontinuity, synthetic control, and instrumental variables to these settings. He applies the resulting tools to questions in political economy and labor economics, studying the effects of return-to-office mandates, internet shutdowns, and political violence.

David’s research is published and forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  the American Economic Review, and the Review of Economics and Statistics, and has been featured in media outlets such as TIME Magazine, Washington Post, and the Financial Times. He also maintains open-source R and Stata packages implementing his methods.

David obtained his PhD in economics from the University of Michigan in 2026, where he received the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship and the Lawrence Klein Fellowship in Econometrics. Before that he was a research student at the University of Oxford and completed master's degrees in economics and economic policy, alongside a bachelor's in philosophy, at KU Leuven. David has also worked as a policy analyst at the Bank of England and the Deutsche Bundesbank.

This fall, David will be teaching introductory econometrics.

Francesco Ruggieri

A public finance and urban economist, Francesco Ruggieri studies how local governments provide and finance public goods, how these choices shape where people live, and how residential patterns in turn affect local policy. His research examines the institutional geography of local government in the United States, with particular attention to the consequences of fragmented and overlapping jurisdictions for property taxation, public spending, and the housing market. He also develops econometric methods to answer empirical questions in local public economics.

Ruggieri earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. He holds a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a bachelor’s degree from Università Bocconi. Prior to his doctoral studies, he worked as a research assistant at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Princeton University.

This year, Ruggieri will teach undergraduate courses in econometrics and policy analysis, as well as a graduate course in public economics.