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CERGE-EI Introduces New Candidates to the 2026–2027 International Job Market

14 October, 2026

From health behavior and identity to household finance, scientific networks and the political economy of industrialization, CERGE-EI’s new job-market cohort reflects the widening range of both questions and methods in contemporary economics.

CERGE-EI has introduced several PhD students for the 2026–2027 international economics job market, bringing together researchers working across applied microeconomics, experimental and behavioral economics, macroeconomics, economic history and political economy.

CERGE-EI’s 2026–2027 Job Market Candidates

Salamatu Nanna Adam’s research orientation is Health economics, Development economics, and Behavioral economics. Her job-market paper Health Risk Information, Social Stigma and Demand for Condoms: Experimental Evidence from Ghana uses a randomized experiment among young adults in Ghana to distinguish between two possible reasons for low condom use: inadequate information about health risks and the social stigma attached to purchasing condoms.

Gayane Baghumyan is an experimental and behavioral economist who uses incentivized experiments to study discrimination, identity, and motivated reasoning. Her job market paper, Can Plausible Errors Provide Cover for Racial Discrimination?, asks whether ambiguous framing gives people a plausible non-discriminatory justification for acting on discriminatory preferences.

In a preregistered experiment, 4,327 White U.S. participants allocated real monetary bonuses to actual recipients, with the ambiguously framed option benefiting either a Black or a White recipient. She finds no evidence at the population level that such framing serves as moral cover: participants chose the ambiguously framed option more often when it benefited the Black recipient, the opposite of what its selective use against Black recipients would predict. The evidence is more consistent with a general tendency to avoid ambiguously framed options.  

Roman Dimakov works at the intersection of economic history and the economics of science and innovation. His job-market paper, Social Ties and Scientists' Productivity: Evidence from Correspondence Networks during the Quantum Revolution, asks how pre-existing social ties shape scientists' responses to a major intellectual breakthrough, offering broader insights into knowledge diffusion and the economics of innovation. The paper adds to a growing economics literature that treats science itself as an economic activity shaped not only by incentives and institutions, but also by networks, communication and access to ideas.

Ilisa Goenka works at the intersection of household finance and macroeconomics, studying how household heterogeneity, debt, and financial frictions shape decisions over the life cycle. Her job-market paper, Student Loans and Housing Market Dynamics, studies how student debt affects first-time homeownership and, through the housing market, households who are not directly affected by student loan policies. Student loan payments reduce the resources available for a down payment and can make it harder for households to qualify for a mortgage, which can then delay home purchases among borrowers. But when policy brings more of these households into the market, the resulting increase in demand helps existing owners sell while making it harder for other buyers to purchase. This is especially pronounced under a one-time debt forgiveness policy, where eligible borrowers become substantially more likely to buy their first home, while potential buyers among non-college households who receive no relief are crowded out of the housing market.

Shafin Shabir is a PhD candidate in Economics whose research focuses on Political Economy and Applied Theory, with additional work on Taxation and Computational Economics. His job market paper, Bureaucratic Rumours and Policymaking, studies how informal warnings from within the bureaucracy can influence government policy even when bureaucrats have no formal power to make or block political decisions. When bureaucrats learn about controversial policies before the public, sharing this information can allow citizens to respond before the policies are enacted and can discourage political leaders from pursuing them in the first place. The paper’s key result is that making bureaucratic warnings more credible does not always make this constraint stronger. More credible warnings can make citizens interpret the absence of a warning as a sign that there is little to worry about, leading them to resist less. Anticipating this, political leaders may become more willing to pursue extreme policies.

Vladimir Shchukin brings theoretical political economy to one of economic history’s biggest questions: Why would an entrenched elite ever promote industrialization when economic modernization could ultimately threaten its political dominance? His job-market paper, The Political Economy of Industrialization, proposes an answer based on strategic political survival and explains how economic modernization becomes a tool through which an old political elite can preserve itself. The research has already attracted recognition. Vladimir won the Czech Economic Society’s Young Economist of the Year 2024 award for the paper.

Sofiana Sinani’s research interests are family economics, cultural economics, development economics, and gender and labor economics. Her job-market paper, Faith, Interrupted: Can States Change Identity?, co-authored with Michela Giorcelli and Enkelejda Havari, studies Albania's religion ban. The central question is whether coercive states can genuinely change identity or merely force citizens to change its public expression. Using civil-registry records and values surveys, the researchers find that the campaign sharply reduced public religious markers, such as names, and increased the adoption of state-preferred names. However, effects on out-group marriage and present-day religiosity and political values are much more limited. The findings therefore distinguish public compliance from private belief.

A Cohort Reflecting Where Economics Is Moving

One striking feature of CERGE-EI’s 2026–2027 group is that few of the papers fit neatly inside old disciplinary boxes. Adam combines development economics with behavioral health experiments. Baghumyan brings behavioral mechanisms into discrimination research. Dimakov uses historical networks to study knowledge production. Goenka combines quantitative macroeconomics with bounded planning. Shabir uses economic theory to understand bureaucratic information flows. Shchukin connects political institutions to historical industrialization, while Sinani combines cultural, family and development economics.

That shows that the researchers are able to connect a clear substantive question with credible empirical identification, quantitative modeling or formal theory rather than simply declaring allegiance to a narrowly defined field.

What the Economics Job Market Is and What Candidates Face This Year

The economics job market is the annual hiring cycle in which newly graduating PhD economists apply for academic and research positions at universities, central banks, international institutions and policy organizations. Candidates typically enter the market with a flagship job-market paper, recommendation letters and a research presentation, followed by first-round interviews, campus visits and job offers.

The 2026–2027 cycle remains highly competitive. Data based on the American Economic Association’s Job Openings for Economists (JOE) listings indicate that hiring is still below the peaks seen in the late 2010s, making a strong research profile and clear institutional fit especially important.

The market is also unusually synchronized. The AEA plans to send candidates’ job-market signals to employers on December 3, 2026, after which first-round interviews can begin. Interviews are generally expected to remain virtual, while campus visits and flyouts follow later in the hiring process.

For CERGE-EI’s candidates, that means entering a selective and distinctly international market. Alongside the strength of their research, they bring the support of an academic community keen to see where their work leads next.