Rafeh Qureshi, a student in the Economics MAPSS program at the University of Chicago, is a Predoctoral Fellow at CEHD. During his tenure at CEHD, he has worked mainly on a project examining social mobility in Denmark. His background primarily involves labor economics, with an emphasis on post-secondary education.

What are your current research areas of interest?

My current research areas of interest are labor economics and econometrics, with an interest in learning about how the multifaceted nature of skills interacts with opportunities and requirements in the labor market to explain the heterogenous impacts of policy interventions.

How did you become interested in studying economics?

I took economics and calculus in my sophomore year of high school, and was instantly drawn to both subjects. Economics naturally came to me as a venue to specialize in; it allows and encourages one to draw from a multitude of different fields, including: mathematics, statistics, psychology, philosophy, and computer science, and combines them in an analytic way that is distinctly its own.

Can you talk about some of the projects you’ve worked on during your time at CEHD?

Several of my projects have focused on the Intergenerational Elasticity of Income, and its drivers in Denmark and the US. A major project has involved trying to create a better measure to capture individuals’ lifetime that would more holistically capture components of individual welfare, including notions such as credit constraints and uncertainty.

How will your time at CEHD influence your future research?

I have learned an incredible amount, both in research techniques and in the philosophy of research in economics through working with Professors Heckman and Durlauf. Engaging with the CEHD community has furnished me with a wealth of questions and possible areas of interest I hope to explore.