Beginning his stint on the EEA council in 2024, Professor of Macroeconomics in the Faculty of Economics Vasco Carvalho, a fellow of Jesus College, says “I'm excited and very happy by the trust of colleagues, since this was a vote open to all members of the association.”
He explains that the position is related to his research at Cambridge and cumulated experience with the postdoctoral program.
“One of my primary objectives is to take stock of the rapidly shifting postdoctoral landscape in Economics in Europe in order to better support their inclusion in the profession, incentivise mobility and access to resources plus professional networks around Europe and help the diffusion of best practices across European institutions,” he says.
Professor Carvalho explains the number of postdoctoral students is growing by the year and now accounts for a significant fraction of early career researchers in Europe. “This structural change in the labour market for PhD economists calls for bespoke efforts that cater to the specificities of this career stage.”
He has a second objective of reviewing existent mentoring programs geared at helping applicants from underrepresented backgrounds successfully apply to Economics PhD programs, typically by matching applicants to academic economists and PhD students. “While a handful of such programs already exist these are many times idiosyncratic efforts, that have difficulty scaling and achieving continuity over the years,” he says. “Understanding current best practices and bottlenecks and identifying what forms of institutional support can help scale and diffuse these efforts across Europe is one of my objectives.”
The European Economic Association (EEA) exists to recognise and celebrate commitment to promote and achieve an outstanding learning experience that enables students to contribute positively to communities and societies around them. Every year it invites applications from colleagues to join the council who can demonstrate excellence in education. The Journal of the European Economic Association (JEEA) has a worldwide reputation for publishing articles of the highest scientific quality in theoretical and empirical economics for a global audience.
