Cao Vu Dan

Cao Vu Dan (Dan Cao) is a Vietnamese economist and Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Georgetown University, where he teaches macroeconomics, economic theory and finance. As a high-school student at the Hanoi gifted school (chuyen KHTN) he represented Vietnam at the 2000 International Mathematical Olympiad in South Korea and won a silver medal with 29/42 points. He then studied mathematics at Hanoi National University and applied mathematics/economics at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris before earning a PhD in Economics at MIT in 2010 with a thesis on dynamic general equilibrium. He joined Georgetown in 2010, has published widely cited work on collateral constraints, asset-price volatility and hyperbolic discounting (with Ivan Werning), and remains active in research on macro-finance and, most recently, the macroeconomics of technology booms.

Notes9

• Represented Vietnam at IMO 2000 in Taejon, South Korea, winning a silver medal with 29/42 points (rank 40, 91.5%), scoring 7/7/0/6/7/2 across the six problems.Jul 2000
• Younger brother Cao Vu Nhan also won an Olympiad medal (IMO gold, 2003), making the Cao family one of Vietnam's rare pairs of international olympiad medalists from Hai Phong.2015
• Took an unusual math-to-economics path: B.A. Mathematics at Hanoi National University (2000-2002) then Ecole Polytechnique in Paris (2002-2005) before a 2010 MIT PhD, which suggests he left Vietnam early and built a European-then-American academic base.2015
• Still publishing into 2026 (AEA 2026 conference program lists a 'Tech Booms: From Dot-Com To AI' paper), which shows the AI-boom macro question is a current research focus rather than solely historical trade/macro work.2025
• Serves on the global network of Vietnam's Initiative for Vietnam Initiative (IVI) as a diaspora economics expert teaching macroeconomics and finance at Georgetown - part of a push to channel overseas Vietnamese academic talent back into policy.Jan 2024
• Paper 'Saving and Dissaving with Hyperbolic Discounting' (with Ivan Werning, NBER Working Paper 24257) has 73+ citations - evidence of a durable contribution to behavioral macroeconomics.Jan 2018
• Born 1982, Vietnamese citizen and US permanent resident; speaks English, French and native Vietnamese - a biography that tracks the IMO-to-elite-economics pipeline.2015
• PhD thesis 'Essays in Dynamic General Equilibrium' (MIT, 2010) supervised by Daron Acemoglu, Ivan Werning, Guido Lorenzoni and Robert Townsend - a committee spanning growth, macro-finance and development.2010
• Google Scholar profile shows ~1,420 citations and an h-index of 14, with co-authors including Wenlan Luo (Tsinghua) - signals an active macro/computational collaboration network.2026
• Attended the high school for gifted students at VNU University of Science in Hanoi (chuyen KHTN), the same feeder school that produced other Vietnamese IMO medalists, and where he is now listed among its notable alumni as a Georgetown economics professor.2026
• Won the Robert Solow Fellowship (2006-2007) and MIT Presidential Fellowship (2005-2006) plus the Eiffel Fellowship in France - a sustained record of funded recognition across three countries.2015
• RePEc affiliation is split 50% MIT / 50% Georgetown, reflecting a research footprint that spans both institutions rather than a clean single-employer history.2026