Announcing the 2023 Meyer Dissertation Fellows
CAMBRIDGE, MA - Two Harvard doctoral students have been named 2023 John R. Meyer Dissertation Fellows by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Leonardo D’Amico is a PhD candidate in Economics whose research focuses on regional macroeconomics and political economy, with a particular focus on housing. The Meyer Fellowship will support Regional Financial Integration and Economic Growth, a paper he is writing with Maxim Alekseev that will examine how mid-twentieth century spatial disparities in mortgage rates in the US affected housing prices, homeownership rates, and migration patterns. D’Amico received an MSc and a BSc in Economic and Social Science from Bocconi University in Milano, Italy. He also worked as a junior economist for Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, is an affiliate of The Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard, and a member of the Reimagining the Economy project at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Lingxuan “Sean” Wu is a PhD candidate in Economics whose research broadly focuses on macroeconomics and finance, particularly related to housing. The Meyer Fellowship will support Understanding Land Finance and Real Estate Booms During Economic Development, a paper that will draw on experiences in China, where local government receive roughly 50 percent of their revenues from land sales, where spending on infrastructure has consistently been more than 10 percent of the Gross National Product, and where there was an eight-fold increase in housing prices between 2004 and 2019. Wu received an M.A. in Economics from Harvard University, as well as a B.S. in Mathematics and Physics and a B.A. in Economics from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.
Meyer Fellows receive a stipend from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and access to the Center’s resources and interdisciplinary network of scholars and practitioners. Fellows are expected to produce a working paper and to present their work in a Housing Research Seminar at the Center.
The fellowship honors the memory of the late John R. Meyer, who chaired the Center's Faculty Committee from 1997 to 2003 and served as its Interim Director from 1996 to 1998. One of the leading urban economists of his generation, Meyer was the James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Economic Growth at the Harvard Kennedy School. He also served as president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, as a professor at Harvard Business School, and as a professor of economics at both Harvard and Yale.
Media Contact: Kerry Donahue, (617) 495-7640, [email protected]