In late August 2019, I move to Johns Hopkins University to become the director of the 21st Century Cities Initiative.     After having served as the Chair of the Department of Economics at USC for the last two years,  I now have a strong understanding of how to be an effective administrator and how to work with Deans and other university leaders.

JHU doesn't want me to be a "little Dean".  JHU wants me to continue my research on urban and environmental economics. It has created an opportunity for me to play to my strength as an interdisciplinary scholar who has broad interests concerning many urban issues.   The rebooted 21CC is expected to connect the university's great scholars and students.  JHU wants my Center to engage with alumni, and urban stakeholders.   This plays to main my intellectual strength. I see how various pieces of the puzzle connect together and I love to talk about ideas.

On a daily basis, my team will be using urban "Big Data" to study the causes and consequences of urban economic growth. We will also be studying the causes and consequences of urban quality of life in U.S cities and cities around the world.   Similar to Raj Chetty at Harvard, I seek to teach a big general education class at JHU to teach students about how to use "data crunching" for understanding our cities.

To gain a  better appreciation of what we will do, please read our new newsletter.  The Center is hiring undergraduates at JHU as research assistants, we are hiring pre-docs and welcome Visiting Scholars.

Our center will be working closely with  Beth Blauer's impressive Centers.  

Follow us on Twitter at @JHU_Cities

The end goal should be like Columbia's Earth Institute but with a focus on social science and its synergies with other core strengths at Hopkins