María José Luengo-Prado is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow, on sabbatical leave from NortheasternUniversity in Boston, where she is a tenured Associate Professor of Economics. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from BrownUniversity, an M.A. in Economics from the Katholique University of Leuven, and a Degree of Licenciatura in Economics from the University of Salamanca. Her research interests include Macroeconomics (both theoretical and applied) and Public Economics. Her research has focused on understanding households' consumption and savings decisions under uncertainty and the effect of these decisions on the broader economy. She has, for instance, examined the impact of lower down payments on consumption volatility and the role of housing on explaining the wealth distribution. Currently, she is investigating the differential effect of house price changes on consumption smoothing for homeowners versus renters, and the role of homeownership in inter-generational economic mobility. Professor Luengo-Prado has also written on the use of vouchers to improve education as well as several aspects of the airline industry. Her work has been published in leading scholarly journals such as International Economic Review, Journal of Monetary Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, and Review of Economic Dynamics, among others. She has received funding for her research from various sources including the Social Science Research Council, the PEW Foundation, the Spanish Ministry of Education, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, Comunidad de Madrid and the Ramon Areces Foundation. She is the recipient of several academic awards including Fulbright and Bank of Spain's pre-doctoral fellowships, an ESRC/SSRC Collaborative Visiting Fellowship to the Institute for Social Economic Research (University of Essex), and a Visiting Scholar appointment at the New England Public Policy Center of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank. Dr Luengo-Prado has also been awarded for her innovative use of technology in the classroom.