Xavier Jaravel is an associate professor at the London School of Economics, where he teaches public economics and how to use micro data and methods to answer macro questions. Jaravel’s research focuses on innovation and productivity, with related work on trade and applied econometrics. He graduated with a B.A. in economics and political science from Sciences-Po Paris and a Ph.D. in business economics from Harvard University.
Expert Type: Grantee
Bentley Macleod
W. Bentley MacLeod is Sami Mnaymneh professor of economics, professor of international and public affairs, and an affiliated law faculty at Columbia University in New York City. He is a specialist in law, labor, and contract economics, with a focus on how incentives are designed to take into account the complex interplay between reputation effects, market competition, and social norms. Current projects include incentives and school choice, the economics of contract and tort law, the economics of performance pay, and the economics of physician diagnostic choice.
Will Dobbie
Will Dobbie is a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research studies the causes and consequences of poverty in America to understand how we can give individuals from all backgrounds a better chance of succeeding. His recent work has examined racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, the labor market consequences of bad credit reports, and the long-run effects of charter schools. Before joining the faculty at Harvard Kennedy School, he was a professor at Princeton University. Dobbie is a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Jonathan Edwards Bicentennial Preceptorship at Princeton University, the W.E. Upjohn Institute Award, and the Distinguished CESifo Affiliate Award. He holds a B.A. in economics from Kalamazoo College, an M.A. in economics from University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Trevon Logan
Trevon Logan, a member of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee, is ENGIE-Axium Endowed Professor of Economics at The Ohio State University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also the associate dean for administration, College of Arts and Sciences. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University’s Center for Health and Well-Being and at the University of Michigan, where he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research. He is also an affiliate of the Initiative in Population Research, the Center for Human Resource Research, the Food Innovation Center, and the Criminal Justice Research Center at Ohio State. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Explorations in Economic History, Historical Methods and Demographic Research. Logan specializes in economic history, economic demography, and applied microeconomics. He also does work that intersects with health economics, applied econometrics, applied microeconomics, and sociology. He received his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his master’s degree in demography, as well as a master’s degree and a Ph.D., in economics from University of California, Berkeley.
Vanessa Williamson
Vanessa Williamson is a senior fellow in governance studies at Brookings, and a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. She studies the politics of redistribution, with a focus on attitudes about taxation. Williamson’s other work examines the political origins of the state Earned Income Tax Credit, the electoral effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and conditions in which voters have supported state tax increases. She is the author, with Theda Skocpol, of The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, which was named one of the 10 best political books of the year by The New Yorker. Williamson received her Ph.D. in social policy from Harvard University, an M.A. from New York University’s Institute of French Studies, and a B.A. in French language and literature from NYU.
Till von Wachter
Till von Wachter is professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, the faculty director of the California Policy Lab’s UCLA site, and director of the Federal Statistical Research Data Center. His research examines how labor market conditions and institutions affect the well-being of workers and their families, including analyzing unemployment and job loss on workers’ long-term earnings and health outcomes, as well as the role of Unemployment Insurance and disability insurance in buffering such shocks. Current research projects focus on the role of the Unemployment Insurance program before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of minimum wages, and homelessness. von Wachter’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute on Aging, the Social Security Administration, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Hilton Foundation, and Arnold Ventures. He has been an expert witness in numerous testimonies before U.S. congressional committees and has provided expert assistance to the city and county of Los Angeles, the state of California, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Canadian Labor Ministry, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations, and the International Monetary Fund. Von Wachter received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Timothy Smeeding
Timothy M. Smeeding is the Lee Rainwater Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Economics. He was director of the Institute for Research on Poverty from 2008–2014. He was named the John Kenneth Galbraith Fellow, American Academy of Political and Social Science, in 2017, and was the founding director of the Luxembourg Income Study from 1983-2006. Professor Smeeding’s recent work has been on social and economic mobility across generations, inequality of income, consumption and wealth, and poverty in national and cross-national contexts. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Tal Gross
Tal Gross is an associate professor in the Department of Markets, Public Policy & Law at Boston University. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on health insurance and household finance. He received my bachelor’s degree from The University of Chicago and my Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He previously taught at the University of Miami School of Business Administration and the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Sylvia Allegretto
Sylvia Allegretto is a labor economist and co-chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley. CWED is a research center housed at the Institute for Researcher on Labor and Employment. Dr. Allegretto received her Ph. D. in economics from the University of Colorado, Boulder and worked for several years at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington DC where she is currently a research associate. Allegretto co-authored several editions of The State of Working America and she most recently authored The State of Working America’s Wealth (2011).
Her research interests include long-term unemployment, family budgets, teacher pay, public employee compensation, low-wage labor markets, inequality, minimum wages and sub-minimum wages received by tipped workers. Allegretto closely tracks a myriad of economic statistics with particular interest in the labor market and how typical workers are faring. She is often called upon by media outlets to provide commentary and contextualize economic data and trends.
T. William Lester
Bill Lester is an associate professor of urban and regional planning at San José State University, specializing in urban and regional economic development. His research focuses on the role of social institutions and policy interventions in reducing income inequality and promoting balanced economic growth. He also is an expert in policy evaluation and economic impact analysis. Before joining San José State University, he spent 10 years as an associate professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Lester received his Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley, his M.A. in urban planning and policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and his B.A. (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in urban studies and economics from the University of Pennsylvania.