Steven Neil Durlauf

Integrative economist who focuses on a range of areas in economic theory and econometrics, including social interactions, economic growth, inequality, policy evaluation and economic complexity. Known for willingness and ability to break disciplinary barriers and integrate valuable ideas from other social sciences and the natural sciences into economics. With others, he has also shown how economic theory can accommodate social influences on individual behavior without sacrificing the choice-based logic of neoclassical theory. This work has been extended to develop positive contributions to the econometric identification of social interactions models, comparing alternative ways to identify social interactions in different settings. Also with others, he clarified the economics and econometrics of growth convergence regressions showing the misleading nature of early empirical research and clarifying the empirical literature as well as developing new evidence suggestive of the extreme persistence of cross-country income differences.