Cole Named James Joo-Jin Kim Professor of Economics

Harold Cole has been appointed the James Joo-Jin Kim Professor of Economics. Cole has been a faculty member at Penn since 2006 and was the lead editor of the International Economic Review (IER), co-published by Penn’s economics department and Osaka University, from 2011 to 2019. His research covers a broad range of macroeconomic topics using a combination of theory, quantitative, and statistical methods. Major topics in his research agenda include the Great Depression, efficient contracting models of firms’ financial structure and compensation, and incomplete asset markets and the impact of limited portfolio behavior. A Fellow of both the Econometric Society and the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory, Cole has recently published two textbooks with Oxford University Press: Finance and Financial Intermediation: A Modern Treatment of Money, Credit, and Banking and Monetary and Fiscal Policy Through a DSGE Lens. In 2015, he was the recipient of the Kravis Award, which honors outstanding undergraduate teaching in Penn’s Department of Economics.

James Joo-Jin Kim, W’59, G’61, GR’63, established this professorship in 2001 to support a preeminent scholar and teacher in the Department of Economics. Kim is a former member of the Penn Arts & Sciences’ Board of Overseers and Wharton’s Executive Board for Asia, and a former member of the Penn Alumni Council and Penn Alumni Board of Directors. He is a former Penn Trustee and currently serves as a Trustee Emeritus. He is a longtime supporter of initiatives across the University, including scholarship support and the Wharton School. Kim has been a longtime advocate and generous supporter of Korean Studies, now known as the James Joo-Jin Kim Program in Korean Studies.