News

People of CERGE-EI

12 December, 2021

"For me, CERGE-EI is very much like a family with multiple generations," says Michael Jetton in an interview for our blog. Michael has been working in various positions at CERGE-EI since 1993.

"Three decades sounds like something from a history book," adds Michael Jetton: "One story that I remember has to do with the background profiles of our first few cohorts. Those students didn’t really have much of an economics background – most students had either a PhD or a Candidate of Science from the pre-transition times in technical fields like mathematics, cybernetic engineering or physics. We had a large number of visiting professors in those first years coming to teach for a semester or academic year. 

It was interesting seeing how these visitors’ expectations were challenged and shaped during the time that they spent in Prague. The topic of comparing students at CERGE-EI and their home institutions would sometimes come up in conversation. In those early years, some told me that while the students here lacked a “pre-loaded” sense of economic intuition, our students’ technical skills were much stronger compared to their students back at home."

Read the full interview here.