Rate My Professor Liana Jacobi

Liana Jacobi is Professor of Econometrics in the Department of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics, at the University of Melbourne, where she serves as Deputy Head of Department. She earned her PhD in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis in 2005, an MA from the same institution in 2000, and a Masters in Economics and Business from Otto-Friedrich University Bamberg in 1997. Jacobi began her academic career at the University of Melbourne as a Lecturer from 2006 to 2010, progressed to Senior Lecturer from 2010 to 2016, Associate Professor from 2017 to 2022, and has been Professor since 2023. She holds a Research Affiliate position at the Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA) in Bonn since 2008. During 2018 to 2022, she was awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. Jacobi is the cofounder and co-chair of the Bayesian Analysis and Modeling (BAM) Research Group at the University of Melbourne since 2014, organizing annual econometrics workshops. She has served on scientific committees for Bayesian econometrics events and as Treasurer of the Econometrics and Finance Section of the International Society of Bayesian Analysis from 2020 to 2021. Her honors include the Bi-annual Best Paper Prize of the Australian Health Economics Society in 2017, Dean’s Prize for Exceptional Distinction in Research in 2016, and Runner-up for Best Paper Prize of the Economic Record in 2021.

Her research centers on computational inference, particularly Bayesian methods and their applications in economics, including empirical industrial organization, health and labour economics, and vector autoregression analysis in macroeconomics. Topics encompass causal inference under endogeneity in panel or choice settings, prior sensitivity in Bayesian inference, and policy issues like marijuana legalization, maternity leave effects, multi-substance drug use, and food taxes. Key publications feature "Marijuana on Main Street? Estimating Demand in Markets with Limited Access" with M. Sovinsky (American Economic Review, 2016), "Bayesian Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Analysis and Returns to Compulsory Schooling" with S. Chib (Journal of Applied Econometrics, 2016), "Food Price Elasticities for Policy Interventions: Estimates from a Virtual Supermarket Experiment in a Multistage Demand Analysis with (Expert) Prior Information" with N. Nghiem, A. Ramírez-Hassan, and T. Blakely (Economic Record, 2021), "Estimating Posterior Sensitivities with Application to Structural Analysis of Bayesian Vector Autoregressions" with D. Zhu and M. Joshi (Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 2024), and "Factor-augmented Bayesian Treatment Effects Models for Panel Outcomes" with H. Wagner and S. Fruehwirth-Schnatter (Econometrics and Statistics, 2023).