Stigler Center Research Professionals wave at a Booth event

Research Professionals

The Stigler Center offers a distinctive pre-doctoral opportunity through its Research Professional Program, designed for individuals with undergraduate or master’s degrees in economics, public policy, business, or related fields. The program provides two-years of hands-on research experience in preparation for future doctoral studies in economics or related disciplines.

 

About

Research Professionals (RPs) work with Stigler Center Faculty Director Luigi Zingales and other affiliated faculty to collect and manage data, conduct statistical analyses and surveys, maintain databases, and provide other key research support associated with faculty research and teaching. RPs have also published original and exclusive writing in the Stigler Center's award-winning digital publication, ProMarket, on wide-ranging topics from the political economy of the TikTok ban to underinvestment in American railroads to conflicts of interest in academia.

Past RPs have used a variety of techniques and tools to examine diverse questions. Examples of past tasks and projects include:

  • Exploring the impact of various conflicts of interest on readers’ trust in academic research findings, uncovering significant nuances and implications for academia and policy
  • Using natural language processing tools to identify news publications’ editorial biases for pro-business policies and political candidates.
  • Investigating the influence of shareholder proposals and proxy statements on corporate annual reports to shareholders and how executive compensation is structured to reflect the objectives espoused in those letters.
Federico Marciano - photo courtesy of Stanford University

“UChicago is very prestigious and extremely rigorous, so doing well ... sends a powerful signal to grad schools that you are qualified.”

— Federico Marciano (Stigler RP '23, now at Stanford University)

Selected Program Placement

Stigler RPs have been accepted into a range of globally-competitive PhD programs, including:

  • MIT
  • Booth School of Business
  • Stanford University
  • UCLA
  • UC Berkley

Highlighted RP Alumni

Linda Wu

Linda Wu

Linda Wu was a Research Professional at the Stigler Center from 2017-2019. She completed her PhD in Economics at University College London and will join the Stone Centre at the University of British Columbia as a Postdoctoral Fellow in August 2025. In Fall 2026, she will join the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor of Economics.

Linda Wu
Pietro Ramella

Pietro Ramella

Pietro Ramella was a Stigler Center Research Professional from 2019-2021. He is currently completing his PhD in Accounting at the Booth School of Business. During his tenure at the Stigler Center, he worked on a project with Professors Luigi Zingales and Raghuram Rajan that later became a 2023 working paper, What Purpose Do Corporations Purport? Evidence from Letters to Shareholders.

Pietro Ramella