Professors Mountjoy and Patterson Named Sloan Research Fellows

Jack Mountjoy, associate professor of economics and a Robert H. Topel Faculty Scholar, is a labor economist whose research largely focuses on questions of how education shapes life trajectories.

“I come from a family of educators, spanning the gamut of levels, subjects, and opinions,” says Mountjoy. “It’s a joy to see this award support large-scale research into what education does, and what it could do better, as a lever for improving lives.”

Mountjoy’s research delves into the economics and econometrics of education, labor markets, and social mobility. He’s explored the value of going to college, whether success depends on the type of college you attend, the role of college as a marriage market, and vocational education’s prospects in promoting upward mobility. His current projects study long-term impacts of charter schools, whether education reduces crime, who benefits from scholarships, and the relative roles of learning versus signaling in driving the value of a college degree.

Mountjoy was nominated by the microeconomics group at Booth, which includes Matt Notowidigdo, the David McDaniel Keller Professor of Economics. He described Mountjoy’s research as rigorous and methodologically innovative.

“I aspire to write papers like Jack’s,” Notowidigdo says. “At a time when higher education is facing increased scrutiny from many directions, I am grateful for Jack’s research that convincingly shows the economic value of higher education—whether it’s a community college education or a four-year college degree.”

Mountjoy earned a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 2018. He joined Booth in 2019 after a year as a postdoctoral fellow in economics at Princeton University.

“This campus hums with intellectual vitality,” Mountjoy says. “I’m surrounded by smart, curious people who relish hacking through the thicket in search of useful truths. It’s a privilege and an inspiration.”

Christina Patterson, associate professor of economics and a Robert King Steel Faculty Fellow, works at the intersection of macroeconomics and labor economics, focusing on how microdata can answer macro questions. 

“The Sloan Fellowship is a huge honor and recognition for the research areas that I’m most interested in,” she says. “It will allow me to support additional research needs, and I’m excited to continue to build on this work going forward.” 

In her research about the role that large firms play in the labor market, Patterson and her coauthors combined survey data, administrative data from the US Census, and proprietary job posting data. This provided a comprehensive picture about national wage setting—the practice that many large firms follow of setting the same or very similar wages across their locations, regardless of differences in labor market conditions or living costs.

In other recent work, Patterson and her coauthors explored the impact of surprise inflation on workers. They found that workers had to take costly actions—for example, job switching, negotiating pay increases, or going on strike—in order for their pay to keep up with inflation.

“These costly actions mean that the nominal pay levels don’t capture the full costs of inflation in the labor market, helping explain why inflation is so unpopular despite strong nominal wage growth,” she explains.

Patterson was nominated for the award by the macroeconomics group at Booth, which includes Erik Hurst, the Roman Family Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, a senior advisor of the Becker Friedman Institute, and a John E. Jeuck Faculty Fellow.

“Christina is one of the top young scholars in the world who uses microdata to study questions of first-order importance to macroeconomic policy,” Hurst says. “She is well-deserving of the Sloan Fellowship, and we are very lucky to have Christina on the Chicago Booth faculty.”

Patterson joined Booth in 2020 from Northwestern University, where she was a postdoctoral research fellow. At Booth, Patterson says she benefits tremendously from the rich research community, mentorship from senior colleagues, and insights from peers. “It’s a really special place to be a faculty member,” she says. “I don’t think I would have been able to do this work in many other places.”