Alex Kowalski is a Ph.D. candidate in the Institute for Work and Employment Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. Drawing on interdisciplinary training in sociology, economics, and industrial relations, his research investigates worker involvement in firm decision-making, technology adoption, and flexible work practices. He received a master’s degree in city planning from the University of California, Berkeley, where he focused on community and economic development. Prior to that, he was a U.S. economics reporter for Bloomberg News in Washington, DC.
Expert Type: Grantee
Conor Walsh
Conor Walsh is assistant professor at Columbia Business School. His main interests are the macroeconomics of growth, firm dynamics, and renewable energy, and how these relate to the economics of cities. He holds a bachelors of international studies from the University of Sydney, and two masters and a doctorate in economics from Yale University.
Scott Duke Kominers
Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 associate professor of business administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard University’s Harvard Business School, and a faculty affiliate of both the Harvard Department of Economics and the Harvard Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications. He studies market and mechanism design, with a particular focus on matching and inequality. He also serves as co-leader of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity’s Inequality: Measurement, Interpretation, and Policy working group and is vice chair of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Economics and Computation. Kominers received his A.B. in mathematics and Ph.D. in business economics from Harvard University.
Morris Kleiner
Morris M. Kleiner is the AFL-CIO Chair professor of labor policy in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He also teaches at the university’s Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies. Kleiner began his research on occupational licensing while at the U.S. Department of Labor and The Brookings Institution. His analysis of occupational licensing has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. He has published extensively on issues of occupational regulation. Kleiner also has provided advice on occupation regulation policy to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, state legislatures, occupation associations, the European Union, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Sean Yixiang Wang
Sean Yixiang Wang is an economist at the U.S. Census Bureau. He earned his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests are primarily about the determinants of worker’s wages, including employer wage-setting policies, how workers navigate the labor market, and the supply of human capital by schools and employers. Prior to graduate school, he worked for 2 years as a full-time research assistant studying behavioral economics and retirement savings decisions at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He completed his undergraduate studies in economics, physics, and math at Washington University in St. Louis and as an affiliate student at University College London. He was originally born in China and immigrated to the United States at the age of 10.
Erin Kelly
Erin Kelly is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and core faculty in the Institute for Work and Employment Research. Kelly investigates the implications of workplace policies and management strategies for workers, firms, and families with a focus on equity and well-being. Previous research has examined scheduling and flexible work practices, family leave, harassment policies, and diversity initiatives in a variety of organizations and industries. As part of the Work, Family, and Health Network, she evaluated innovative approaches to work redesign with group-randomized trials in professional/technical and healthcare workforces. Her new book with Phyllis Moen, Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What to Do About It, will be published by Princeton University Press in early 2020.
Samuel Young
Samuel Young is an assistant professor of economics at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business. His research explores how labor market institutions, such as regulations and policy interventions, affect workers and firms. Recently, his work has focused on unions, noncompete clauses, Unemployment Insurance, and inequality. Previously, Young was a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Census Bureau. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2022.
E. Mark Curtis
E. Mark Curtis is an associate professor of economics at Wake Forest University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Georgia State University, his M.A. in economics from Duke University, and his B.A. from Furman University. His primary fields of research are environmental, public, and labor economics with a particular focus on program evaluation, taxes, and environmental policy. His research has been published in economic journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, and seeks to understand the implications of public policies for firms and workers.
Ezra Karger
Ezra Karger is an economist in the microeconomics research group at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He works on topics in labor economics and industrial organization. His current research examines the effect of public libraries on children and the relationship between antitrust policy and the economic output of workers and firms. He received his B.A in mathematics, statistics, and economics, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics, all from the University of Chicago.
Anna Gassman-Pines
Anna Gassman-Pines is an associate professor of public policy in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and a faculty affiliate of Duke’s Center for Child and Family Policy. Gassman-Pines received her B.A. with distinction in psychology from Yale University, where she was an affiliate of the Bush Center for Child Development and Social Policy, and her Ph.D. in community and developmental psychology from New York University. Her research focuses on the development of low-income children in the United States and, in particular, parents’ experiences outside the home—in low-wage workplaces, labor markets, and accessing social services—and the spillover to the home and the effects on family functioning and child well-being.