On June 5, 2026, Yale University hosted the 2nd annual Pre-Doctoral Economics Conference, welcoming pre-doctoral fellows from institutions around the world to share their research, meet fellow pre-doctoral researchers, and receive feedback from peers.

 

Princeton University’s Juan G. Arias Navatta and Dylan Black both attended and presented their research at the conference. Arias Navatta presented his paper “Intergenerational spillovers of Collective Bargaining,” and Black presented “Labor Disputes and Creative Output.” Several other Princeton fellows attended the conference (photographed above, left to right, front row: Juan Gaspar Arias Navatta, Gabriel Koiran Portier, Cedric Christensen, Anna Chernesky, and Samhitha Josyula; back row: Flemming Slok, Dylan Black, and Kevin Cao).

 

In 2025, for the first time, Princeton University extended invitations to pre-doctoral research assistants from domestic and international institutions to share their individual research at its annual (and previously internal) conference. This event was hosted and organized by pre-doctoral research assistants in Princeton’s Department of Economics. The decision to broaden the pool of attendees and presenters created a rich environment for early-career researchers from across institutions to present their findings and learn from one another.

 

Each year, the conference will be hosted by a participating peer institution, providing the opportunity for fellows at each university to organize the event. The 2026 Conference was organized by the Yale pre-docs and chaired by Rebecca Toseland, Director of Research Support and Senior Lecturer at the Yale Tobin Center for Economic Policy.

 

With over 70 pre-doctoral fellows attending this year, 30 of whom presented their research, Princeton’s Economics Department is pleased to see the event growing and contributing to the professional development of researchers in the field.

 

Ahead of the event, a meeting for Pre-Doc Program Directors took place with representatives from participating universities, including Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, the University of Chicago, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Pennsylvania, sharing best practices on pre-doc recruitment, professional development, mentoring, and training. Princeton participants included Valerie Ching (Economics Department), Dana Molina (Economics Department), and Pallavi Nuka (SPIA).