Congratulations to our Fall 2025 Weidenbaum Center Small Grant Awardees!

If you happened to be in New York City last weekend, perhaps you saw a Times Square billboard promoting a very WashU pastime: Student Life Games. There, smiling from the 55-by-31-foot digital display, were crossword creators and founders of the newspaper’s games page, recent graduate Alex Nickel (Economics Alumni) and sophomore Rena Cohen.

This fall, 17 new researchers and instructors join 11 humanities departments and programs in Arts & Sciences.

Congratulations, Rudolph Chan! The Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy has awarded a total of $135,000 to support four exceptional PhD students in Political Science, Economics, and Sociology through the 2025–2026 Weidenbaum Graduate Fellowship.

We are pleased to announce that several A&S graduate programs have risen in the U.S. News and World Report rankings this year.

Ismael Mourifié, a rising economist, discusses his groundbreaking research into the role gender plays in career path selection.

Join us in recognizing the achievements and memories of faculty members who are closing out their careers in Arts & Sciences.

For weeks, stock markets have been falling, and the plunge accelerated after President Donald Trump on April 2 unveiled U.S. tariffs on virtually every country.

The salary bump that people who switch jobs used to command has vanished

“Economic Realities of the American Dream” What prompted the idea for the course?

One of us – Steve Fazzari – was trained as an economist, and the other – Mark Rank – as a sociologist. We’ve shared scholarly interests over the years as colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis. But our teaching partnership really began with a lecture Mark gave about his book “One Nation Underprivileged,” which explores the causes and consequences of poverty and how the reality of poverty conflicts with American values. This talk inspired Steve at a moment in his career when he sought to integrate economic inequality into his teaching.

Our conversations deepened as Mark was researching his next book, “Chasing the American Dream: Understanding What Shapes Our Fortunes.” We realized that both of us could bring something unique to the table about the American Dream, and this was the spark for the class.