Hilary Hoynes is a former member of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee, a professor of economics and public policy, and holds the Haas Distinguished Chair in Economic Disparities at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also co-directs the Berkeley Opportunity Lab. Her research focuses on poverty, inequality, food and nutrition programs, and the impacts of government tax and transfer programs on low-income families. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists. She currently serves on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Building an Agenda to Reduce the Number of Children in Poverty by Half in 10 Years. Previously, she was a member of the Federal Commission on Evidence-Based Policy Making. Hoynes received her Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University and her undergraduate degree in economics and mathematics from Colby College.
Expert Type: Grantee
Ingrid Haegele
Ingrid Haegele is an assistant professor of economics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her research studies the role of firms in the labor market. Currently, she collaborates with large companies to understand how organizational design affects labor market outcomes and long-term inequality. She received her B.S. in international economics from the University of Tübingen, her M.S. in economics from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and her Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Simcha Barkai
Simcha Barkai is an assistant professor of finance at Boston College and a junior fellow at the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. His research interests are centered on competition between firms in the U.S. economy, its impact on wages, investment, and corporate valuations, as well as the political economy of government competition policy. He received a Ph.D. in financial economics from the University of Chicago and graduated from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem with an M.Sc. and B.Sc. in mathematics.
David Weil
David Weil is a professor at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. Prior to that, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to be the administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor and was the first Senate-confirmed head of that agency in a decade. He led the Wage and Hour Division from 2014 to January 2017. Weil is an internationally recognized expert in employment and labor market policy, regulation, transparency policy and digital empowerment, and the impacts of supply-chain and industry restructuring on employment and work outcomes and business performance. Weil has written five books, including The Fissured Workplace (Harvard University Press), and published more than 100 articles. Weil received his B.S. at Cornell University and M.A. and Ph.D. in public policy at Harvard University.
Randall Akee
Randall Akee is a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers, Executive Office of the President. He is currently on leave from his position as an associate professor in the Department of Public Policy and American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Previously, he served as a David M. Rubenstein fellow in economic studies at The Brookings Institution. Akee is an applied microeconomist and has worked in the areas of labor economics, economic development, and migration. He served on the National Advisory Council on Race, Ethnic, and Other Populations at the U.S. Census Bureau. Akee is a research fellow at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He completed his doctorate at Harvard University in June 2006.
Thomas Kochan
Thomas A. Kochan is the George M. Bunker Professor Emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Institute for Work and Employment Research. He focuses on the need to update work and employment policies, institutions, and practices to catch up with a changing workforce and economy. His most recent book is Shaping the Future of Work: A Handbook for Action and a New Social Contract (Routledge, 2021). Kochan received his Ph.D. in industrial relations from the University of Wisconsin.
Florian Ederer
Florian Ederer is an associate professor of economics at the Yale University School of Management and a research staff member at the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics. Ederer’s research, which has been widely published in leading journals, is in the areas of organizational economics, innovation, and industrial organization. It focuses on the incentive design in organizations, how it shapes innovation, and how it is, in turn, affected by social interactions and more realistic assumptions about the motives of principals and agents. Some of his recent work explores the impact of common ownership on managerial compensation and the existence and pervasiveness of “killer acquisitions” that prevent startups from challenging dominant market incumbents. In his academic work, he draws on a broad set of tools often combining theoretical models, experimental methods, and empirical analysis. Prior to joining the Yale School of Management, Ederer was a faculty member of the University of California, Los Angeles Anderson School of Management. He earned his doctorate in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his master’s and undergraduate degrees from the University of Oxford.
Peter Norlander
Peter Norlander is an associate professor of management at the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago. Norlander’s research interests include alternative work arrangements such as outsourcing, remote work, and gig work, labor market power, and the evolution of labor and management practices. He holds a B.S. in industrial and labor relations from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and a Ph.D. in management and organizations from the University of California, Los Angeles Anderson School of Management.
Elena Prager
Elena Prager is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School. Her research uses empirical analyses of large, detailed datasets to answer policy-relevant questions about the labor market and the healthcare market. She has analyzed merger and acquisition activity and its impact on workers, work requirements in social welfare programs, the formation of health insurance provider networks, and drivers of healthcare prices. Prager’s research often addresses antitrust questions. In 2021 and 2022, she served in government as a visiting economist at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. Prager completed her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in 2016.
Ruth Milkman
Ruth Milkman is a distinguished professor of sociology at the City University of New York and also at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, where she serves as chair of the Labor Studies program. Milkman is a sociologist of labor and labor movements who has written on a variety of topics involving work and organized labor in the United States, past and present. She was elected the 2016 president of the American Sociological Association. She spent 21 years as a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she directed the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment from 2001 to 2008. She is the author of Immigrant Labor and the New Precariat (Polity, 2020), among other books. She earned her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.