The Economics Department at Princeton University is pleased to announce that the Princeton University Board of Trustees has approved the promotions of Michal Kolesár, Eduardo Morales, and Owen Zidar to the role of full professor.
In their new roles as tenured faculty, Professors Kolesár, Morales, and Zidar join nearly 30 other tenured Princeton Economics Department faculty whose research covers a broad range of disciplines from finance to econometrics to economic history to development economics.

“In just a few years since completing their dissertations, Professors Kolesár, Morales, and Zidar have become intellectual leaders in their fields,” said Economics Department Chair Wolfgang Pesendorfer. “We are fortunate to have them on our faculty and proud of their extraordinary accomplishments.”

Professor Kolesár is an econometrician who focuses on developing methods for causal inference. His most recent research shows how to construct confidence intervals based on shrinkage estimators. These intervals can be used to assess uncertainty when one is interested in effects for many individuals or units, such as teacher or school effects, or hospital or neighborhood quality. Kolesár currently teaches Advanced Econometrics for graduate students and was acknowledged by the Princeton Graduate Economics Club for outstanding teaching in 2017 and 2018. Kolesár earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2013. In 2019, he was awarded the Sloan Research Fellowship.

Professor Morales, who is jointly appointed to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, conducts research in international trade, industrial organization, econometrics, and public finance. His most recent work explores how demand-driven changes in domestic sales affect export flows and how gains from innovation by multinational firms are distributed across different countries where those firms are located. Morales currently teaches courses on international trade at the graduate level. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2011.

Professor Zidar, who is jointly appointed to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, is a public finance economist who studies tax policy. His most recent work examines the economic effects of state and local business tax incentives, the measurement of top wealth and income inequality, and the implications of an increase in the share of businesses organized as pass-through entities. Zidar is currently teaching a new course in public finance, first offered to Princeton undergrads in Spring 2020, that explores how government expenditure and tax policies affect resource allocation and the distribution of income. Zidar earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014. He is a 2018 recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and a 2020 recipient of the Sloan Research Fellowship.

The Economics Department congratulates Professors Kolesár, Morales, and Zidar on their new appointments. We look forward to celebrating their many contributions to academic life at Princeton in the years ahead.