We have a distinguished and large faculty that allows us to offer a wide range of major fields, including behavioral and experimental economics, comparative institutional economics, development, econometrics, economic history, industrial organization, international trade and finance, labor economics, microeconomic theory, macroeconomics, political economy, public economics, and energy and environmental economics. The department offers supporting courses in applied econometrics and computational economics, which allow students from a variety of fields to develop research tools. We have a working relationship with other departments on campus that allow our students to take courses in related fields not offered by our department, such as finance and demography.

While students can choose any pair of major and minor fields offered by the department, some fields share common tools or topics and are thus natural complements. Most of our research workshops are run jointly by two or more complementary fields. We present information on these broader categories below. For a full list of faculty, with links to website and other information, click on the following link: Faculty and Staff Listing. For more information the requirements for majoring or minoring in a particular field, please consult the Graduate Handbook.

Development, Labor, and Public Economics

Students in development, labor, and public economics learn the theoretical and empirical tools needed to assess household behavior and the impact of government policies on households, both in developed and developing countries. These fields jointly organize an afternoon workshop in development, labor, and public economics. Faculty in development, labor, and public include Katharine Abraham, Daniel Agness, Jessica Goldberg, Judy Hellerstein, Ethan Kaplan, Daniel Reck and Sergio Urzua. Our recent research covers topics including the impact of divorce on children's adult trajectories; the effect of grade inflation on college going and earnings; intergenerational transmission of lifespan; measuring the impact of teachers; the socially optimal way to use machine learning and AI to target tax audits; the optimal design of policies in the presence of behavioral or psychological frictions; how the welfare effects of taxes and transfers depend on household composition; the role of child sibling health in adult occupation choices; the impact of test score dispersion on adult earnings; the economic analysis of incentives in Organ Procurement Organizations; the effects of school violence on teacher's labor markets; the consequences of centralized admission systems on schooling assignments; the effects of public housing on children and firms in Ethiopia;  how social networks impact misallocation in Rwanda; women’s employment in the retail sector in Bangladesh; the interaction of women’s entrepreneurship and gender norms in Tanzania; and the design of financial products to overcome failures in rural markets in developing countries.

Econometrics

Students in econometrics gain the tools to do high quality empirical work. A deep understanding of econometric concepts and methods is important, since publication in many top journals requires that applied researchers have a strong command of frontier level econometric techniques and often also an ability to push the envelope in terms of econometric techniques. Thus, it is important that applied students, as well as those planning to work in theoretical econometrics, gain a very solid foundation in econometric theory. Maryland faculty is currently serving or has served as co-Editors or Associate Editors at the Journal of Econometrics, Econometric Theory, Econometrics Journal, Econometric Reviews, and the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics. Faculty in econometrics organize the Monday afternoon workshop in econometrics and include John Chao, Guido Kuersteiner and Yiqi Liu (arriving in Fall of 2027). Recent faculty research in econometrics investigates the properties of instrumental variable estimators with many weak instruments, Bayesian estimation and model selection methods, spatial and cross sectional interaction models including peer effects, uniformly valid statistical inference procedures, forecasting in Big Data environments, high-dimensional factor models, dynamic panel data models, in particular difference-in-difference models and models with Bartik structures, GMM and ML estimation of cross sectionally dependent processes, program evaluation, propensity score methods, estimation of fully structural models based on optimizing behavior, as well as applied econometric research in the areas of monetary policy, international finance, labor and computationally intensive statistical methods.

Economic History, Institutions, and Political Economy

Students in these fields study how policies and institutions are formed and how, in turn, they affect economic and political outcomes. Workshops are occasional rather than on a regular basis. Faculty in this area include Peter Coughlin, Allan Drazen (Emeritus), Ethan Kaplan, Peter Murrell, and John Wallis.

Energy and Environmental Economics

Students in this field who study Environmental Economics study externalities—e.g., local and global air pollution, congestion in cities, the spread of infectious disease, plastic pollution—and policies to correct them. This includes determining how stringent these policies should be, at what level of government they should be implemented and how effective current and former policies have been. Students who study Energy Economics examine how society produces and trades energy supplies and services. This includes policies in the electricity sector, the supply and demand for electric vehicles and the role of renewable energy in the economy. The faculty in this field include Maureen Cropper and colleagues in the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department: Anna Alberini, Jim Archsmith, Josh Linn, Louis Preonas and Rob Williams.

Students in macroeconomics and international finance learn the tools needed to analyze dynamic general equilibrium models and conduct advanced empirical analyses, applying them to questions related to business cycles, firm dynamics, and exchange rate fluctuations. The Wednesday afternoon workshop in macroeconomics and international finance features guest speakers from leading institutions around the world. Our faculty in these fields include Boragan Aruoba, Pierre De Leo, John Haltiwanger, John Shea, Luminita Stevens, and William Witheridge. Recent research spans topics including firm pricing and inflation dynamics; firm dynamics, productivity, and misallocation; entrepreneurship and business formation; information frictions and expectations formation; monetary policy, exchange rate policy, and industrial policy; and international asset pricing and capital flow dynamics.