Jeanne Lafortune

Jeanne Lafortune is a Canadian economist who currently works as aa full professor in Economics and director of pesearch at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Lafortune holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her research interests focus on three main fields, including economic history, family and development economics.

Education and work

Lafortune graduated with a B.A. in economics (with honors) and Minor in international development from McGill University in 2002. She then received her M.A. in economics from the University of Toronto in 2003. She further pursued her studies and earned her Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2008, where she wrote her final dissertation "Essays on Matching, Marriage and Human Capital Accumulation". She also served for the Government of Canada as an economist at the Economic Studies and Policy Analysis Division for the Department of Finance from 2003 to 2004. while there is limited evidence regarding the relationship between births and worse health outcomes of infants. For instance, the authors found that the birth rate increases during economically prosperous periods, but this is due to the expansion of families formed before the boom rather than the creation of new families during these periods. Banerjee, A., Duflo, E., Ghatak, M., & Lafortune, J. (2013). Marry for what? caste and mate selection in modern India. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 5(2), 33–72. Gross, T., Lafortune, J., & Low, C. (2014). What happens the morning after? the costs and benefits of expanding access to emergency contraception. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 33(1), 70–93. Lafortune, J., & Lee, S. (2014). All for one?: Family size and children's educational distribution under credit constraints. The American Economic Review, 104(5), 365–369. Covarrubias, M., Lafortune, J., & Tessada, J. (2015). Who comes and why? determinants of immigrants skill level in the early xxth century us. Journal of Demographic Economics, 81(1), 115–155. Lafortune, J., Tessada, J., & González-Velosa, C. (2015). More hands, more power? estimating the impact of immigration on output and technology choices using early 20th century US agriculture. Journal of International Economics, 97(2), 339–358. Lafortune, J., & Low, C. (2017). Tying the double-knot: The role of assets in marriage commitment. American Economic Review, 107(5), 163–167. doi:10.1257/aer.p20171058 Chiappori, P., Iyigun, M., Lafortune, J., & Weiss, Y. (2017). Changing the rules midway: The impact of granting alimony rights on existing and newly formed partnerships. The Economic Journal, 127(604), 1874–1905. Lafortune, J., Lewis, E., & Tessada, J. (2019). People and machines: A look at the evolving relationship between capital and skill in manufacturing, 1860–1930, using immigration shocks. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 101(1), 30–43.

Teaching Lafortune started as an assistant professor at the University of Maryland College of Behavioral and Social Sciences in the U.S. from 2008 to 2012. She worked in the Department of Economics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (UC) as an assistant professor from 2010 to 2015, where she later became associate professor in 2015. Along her teaching experience, she has taught economics courses at both undergraduate and graduate level.

On May 27, 2022, she was promoted to full professorship of economics at UC in Chile.

At the University of Maryland:

CourseUndergraduateGraduateIntermediate Microeconomic Analysis• ECON326Topics in Economic Development•ECON616

At the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (UC):

Grants and awards

Affiliations Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)