2020 psychology, economics, history, and political science graduate Dylan Baker was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. With his fellowship, Dylan will pursue a Ph.D. in economics at University of Chicago.

“I'm interested in economics, because I think the field is very good at analyzing important public policy questions that may seem unanswerable at first brush,” he said. “Using clever tools to identify cause-and-effect in non-experimental contexts, economics helps us to understand the intended and unintended consequences of the policies we implement. Moreover, these results are accompanied by a thoughtful treatment of ideas like tradeoffs and incentives and a broad applicability that permits economic analysis of topics ranging from the labor market to crime to health to the environment. Through the strength and versatility of these methods and frameworks, I feel economics as a field provides a solid foundation for me to pursue the policy-oriented social science research questions that I'm interested in.”

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