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.
Expert Type: Grantee
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.
Simon Jäger
Simon Jäger is an assistant professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He graduated with a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University after studying economics at the University of Bonn and at the University of California, Berkeley. His work combines experimental and quasi-experimental methods with large administrative datasets to shed light on the functioning of labor markets and the origins and consequences of inequality. He holds affiliations with the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Institute for the Study of Labor, or IZA, among others, and will be visiting Stanford University in the academic year 2019–2020.
Scott Allard
Scott W. Allard is the Daniel J. Evans Endowed Professor of Social Policy at the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington. Allard is also the associate dean for research and engagement. His primary areas of research expertise are urban poverty, employment among low-skill workers, food security, safety net utilization, and the spatial accessibility of governmental and nongovernmental safety net programs. He holds many other positions in and outside of the university, including serving on the Board and councils of several journals and centers. Allard holds a B.A. in political science from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan.
Isaac Jabola-Carolus
Isaac Jabola-Carolus is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research focuses on paid in-home care work and policy efforts to raise labor standards within that rapidly growing industry. Through survey and interview methods, his dissertation examines how regulatory bodies and labor organizations affect workers’ rights enforcement in U.S. cities. Jabola-Carolus’ past research has been published in New Political Science, Social Movement Studies, and Sociological Insight. He has served as the New York Chapter Graduate Fellow for the Scholars Strategy Network, worked at the Participatory Budgeting Project, and taught sociology at Lehman College, City University of New York. He received his B.A. in development studies from Brown University.