John Rust

It really isn’t productive to criticize the status quo in economics these days, nor is it productive to try to promote the virtues of structural estimation. Criticism only encourages the practitioners to rally around the flag. I think it is equally a waste of time to try to engage in salesmanship.

My main message is though there is ample room for getting far more knowledge from limited data (and even more when we have access to “big data” ) by optimally combining inductive and deductive approaches to inference and learning, it is important to recognize that there are a number of inherent limits to inference that may be insuperable. These limits were not adequately addressed in Wolpin’s book, and motivated the title of this review.

EJM does not attempt to fundamentally alter the decentralized “endogenous search and matching” process by which the economics job market currently operates. Since there is unrestricted entry of intermediaries similar to EJM and a number of for-profit and non-profit organizations are currently competing in this market, we discuss the problem of market fragmentation that can occur when too many organizations attempt to intermediate trade in the market. Contrary to conventional wisdom in industrial organization theory, we show that unrestricted entry and competition of intermediaries can result in suboptimal outcomes. We discuss conditions under which the market might be improved if there is sufficient coordination to promote information sharing, such as establishing a dominant information clearinghouse that operates as a non-profit public service — a role EJM is trying to fulfill.

John Rust holds a stronger position on the issue of disconnect between theoretical economics and econometrics from the real world (empirical) problems. At the "Causality in the Social Sciences Conference" held at Stanford University on December 5–6, 2014 he gave a talk titled ""Mostly Useless Econometrics: Measuring the Causal Effect of Econometric Theory" (PDF) . " where he pointed out that development of complicated econometric theories is rewarded disproportionally to their practical usefulness.

EconJobMarket.org grew in various significant characteristics (number of job adds posted, number of recruiters' accounts, number of applicants' accounts, number of applications transmitted, number of recommenders' accounts, number of recommendations transmitted) between its inception and 2011 at an average annual rate between 79% and 194%.

EconJobMarket.org (EJM) is a nonprofit organization that facilitates the flow of information in the economics job market by providing a secure central repository for the files of job-market candidates (including papers, reference letters, and other materials) accessed on line. EJM was founded in 2007 by Martin Osborne, John Rust, and Joel Watson, and is run by a group of academic economists who volunteer their time and effort. EconJobMarket.org is endorsed by The Econometric Society, Canadian Economics Association, European Economic Association, Eurasia Business and Economics Society, Society for Economic Dynamics, Verein für Socialpolitik, VOX and walras.org

In 2004 John Rust co-founded the software development company Technoluddities, Inc. which operates several web-based software products widely used by the economic profession. Technoluddities, Inc. owns trademarks to three of these services, namely Editorial Express, Conference Maker and Head Hunter.

Over 625 international conferences have used Conference Maker since it was introduced in 2001, more than 150,000 submissions have been made to Conference Maker for these various conferences and over 290,000 people worldwide have used it.

John Rust had been affiliated with a number of governmental bodies, including Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System (research consultant, 1995), Panel of Expert Reviewers of Social Security Administration’s MINT Model (member, 1998-1999), Technical Panel of Social Security Advisory Board (member, 1998-1999), Long Term Modeling Advisory Group U.S. Congressional Budget Office (member, 2001-2004), Social Security Administration (advisor for demonstration project resulting from the 1999 Work Incentives Improvement Act, 2000-2003). He has also been a member of Steering Committee of the Health and Retirement Study at University of Michigan (2000-2002), senior advisor at The Brattle Group (since 2004) and fellow of TIAA-CREF Institute, New York (since 2005).

After graduating from University of Pennsylvania in 1977, John Rust worked as research analyst for Morgan Stanley in New York City for two years. His first academic job was at the University of Wisconsin (assistant professor, 1983-1987, associate professor, 1987-1989, and full professor, 1990-1996), after which he had professorial positions at Yale University (1996-2001) and University of Maryland (2001-2011) before starting his current affiliation with Georgetown University.

John Philip Rust (born May 23, 1955) is an American economist and econometrician. John Rust received his PhD from MIT in 1983 and taught at the University of Wisconsin, Yale University and University of Maryland before joining Georgetown University in 2012. John Rust was awarded Frisch Medal in 1992 and became the fellow of Econometric Society in 1993.

John Rust was born in Wisconsin on May 23, 1955. He graduated from Waukesha High School in 1973, completed B.A. in Mathematics in 1977 at the University of Pennsylvania, and received his Ph.D. in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983. His dissertation titled “Stationary Equilibrium in a Market for Durable Assets” under the supervision of Daniel McFadden was published as Econometrica article in 1985.