People

Martin Saavedra is an Associate Professor of Economics who joined Rutgers in fall 2023. He was previously the William and Jeanette Smith Associate Professor of Economics at Oberlin College. He holds a B.S.B.A. from The Catholic University of America and both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pittsburgh. He is an applied microeconomist who studies how political, legal, and public health institutions affect public discourse, as well as economic and health outcomes. Much of this research uses unstructured text data from historical settings. His earlier work focused on the long-run effects of infectious disease and the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. Saavedra is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has served on the editorial board of Explorations in Economic History.