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Everything Economics at the University of Toronto
The Khazra Research Lab (K.R.L.) is not a classroom simulation. It is a working research lab where students participate in real projects, real data, real papers, and real seminars. Launched gradually between the summer session of 2025 and the start of the fall semester, the K.R.L. has already brought six students into the heart of applied economics research, where the excitement, and challenges, of working with large, complex datasets is part of everyday life. [Read more…]
The Centre de recherches mathématiques, the Fields Institute, and the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS) have awarded the 2026 CRM-Fields-PIMs Prize to Professor Robert McCann. McCann is cross appointed to the Departments of Economics and Mathematics at the University of Toronto. The prize recognizes research achievements in the mathematical sciences.
In its comments, the award jury cited research that Professor McCann started to publish in the field of optimal transport, the art of developing tools to find the most efficient way to distribute real or theoretical mass from one place to another. The work has widespread, cross-disciplinary applications.
“Working at the interface of analysis, geometry, physics, and economics, Dr. McCann has continually broadened the reach of optimal transport,” read the jury’s press release. “His analytical framework has become central in economic models of matching and equilibrium, in which optimal transport maps provide the mathematical underpinning for understanding how agents are effectively assigned to contracts or goods. This interplay between pure mathematics and applied modelling exemplifies his versatility and the breadth of his scientific vision.” [Read more…]
What is the value of human work in a world of generative AI? In her paper, Learning to Prompt: Human Adaptation in Production with Generative AI, Economics PhD candidate Sijie Lin investigated the role human creativity might play to answer that question. Lin investigated how people use Midjourney, an AI image generator, the users of Discord can access to create images based on text prompts. To Lin, the tool provided an interesting setting to conduct research.
“Midjourney allowed me to observe the creative process,” Lin said. “In many previous settings we only observed inputs and outputs, but in this setting, I can see exactly how people interact with AI, going back and forth to come up with the image they want.”
What Lin discovered is that using AI tools to produce quality work that meets specifications requires iteration and human effort.
“It’s not trivial to get what you want from AI,” she explained. “You need to write the right prompts, so the output goes in the direction you want. That judgment is very important and it’s mentally demanding. You can’t just press a button and magically get whatever you want.” [Read more…]
Fewer people are waiting to be seated to dine at their favourite restaurants. Instead, they wait at home for delivery services like Uber Eats and Door Dash to bring them a variety of cooked fare. That doesn’t necessarily mean the eat-in restaurant will become extinct. Spatial economist Siyuan Liu examined how the rise of online food delivery platforms influenced commercial real estate demand.
Her paper, Space and Cyberspace: The Impact of Food Delivery Services on Retail Real Estate, was inspired when subject expertise met a growling stomach.
“I ordered a lot, probably too much, from food delivery platforms. As a Ph.D. student, I really can’t live without them,” Liu explained. “And I’ve always been interested in urban economics and retail real estate. That motivates me to study the interaction between online food delivery platforms and their spatial consequences, or how online and offline interact with each other.” [Read more…]
It’s a fascinating time to be an international trade specialist. Just ask Vanya Georgieva, a PhD candidate with the Department of Economics who has spent the last five years developing expertise in tariffs, subsidies and other tools of trade policy governments have at the ready. Her Job Market Paper, Trade and Industrial Policy with Global Production Networks, studies how tariffs and subsidies propagate through global production networks.
“Sometimes it feels a bit too close! I’ll read an article and immediately spot all the economic dynamics at play,” Georgieva admitted. “But beyond professional curiosity, it’s an important moment for trade economists to help unpack the deeper consequences of what’s happening.”
With daily headlines cataloguing each move in the tariff wars, it’s become normal for friends, family and undergraduate students to bring questions about whether their governments should or should not retaliate to Georgieva. It’s a role she has prepared for and feels a responsibility to fulfill.
“Understanding is fundamental,” she said. “Underneath the technical and political language, the key concepts can be explained in a way that’s totally everyday. I think one of the most important things we can do as researchers is to share what we’ve learned. Academia gives us access to incredible knowledge and tools, but that value multiplies when it’s shared, whether through collaboration, public engagement, or working with policy institutions.” [Read more…]