Jess Benhabib is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Political Economy at New York University. His research interests include macroeconomics and economic growth. He is a fellow of the Econometrics Society and has been published in the Journal of Economic Growth and Journal of Economic Theory, among other publications. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.
Expert Type: Grantee
Jesse Rothstein
Jesse Rothstein holds the Carmel P. Friesen Chair in Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also professor of economics. He is the co-director of the California Policy Lab, which he co-founded (with Till von Wachter) in 2017, and a nonresident scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. He previously served as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor and as senior economist with the White House Council of Economic Advisers. From 2015 to 2020, he served as director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UC Berkeley. Rothstein’s research examines education policy, tax and transfer policy, and the labor market. His recent work includes studies of school finance, intergenerational economic mobility, take-up of safety net benefits, and regional and industry wage differentials. His work has been published in leading journals in economics, public policy, education, and law. He has served as an expert witness in several cases regarding teacher evaluation and school finance.
Rothstein is a member of the editorial boards of Industrial Relations, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Education Finance and Policy, and the National Education Policy Center, and of the executive board of the Society of Labor Economists. He was named the John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar by the Labor and Employment Relations Association in 2011. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a fellow of the National Education Policy Center, the CESifo Research Network, the IZA, and the Learning Policy Institute. He received a Ph.D. in economics and a Master of Public Policy, both from the University of California, Berkeley, and an A.B. from Harvard University.
Janelle Jones
Janelle Jones is the vice president of policy and program at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Previously, she was the chief economist and policy director at the Service Employees International Union. Prior, she was the chief economist at the U.S Department of Labor, the first Black woman to serve in that role. Before that, she was an economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute working on a variety of labor market topics within EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, and the Economic Analysis and Research Network. She was also a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, where she worked on topics including racial inequality, unemployment, job quality, and unions, and an economist at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Her research has been cited in The New Yorker, The Economist, Harper’s, The Washington Post, The Review of Black Political Economy, and other publications. Jones holds a B.S. in mathematics from Spelman College and an M.A. in applied economics from Illinois State University.
Jane Waldfogel
Jane Waldfogel is a professor of social work and public affairs at Columbia University’s Columbia School of Social Work and a visiting professor at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics. She has written extensively on the impact of public policies on child and family well-being. Her books include: Britain’s War on Poverty (Russell Sage Foundation, 2010); Steady Gains and Stalled Progress and Inequality and the Black-White Test Score Gap (Russell Sage Foundation, 2008); What Children Need (Harvard University Press, 2006); Securing the Future: Investing in Children from Birth to College (Russell Sage Foundation, 2000); and The Future of Child Protection: How to Break the Cycle of Abuse and Neglect (Harvard University Press, 1998). Her current research includes studies of work-family policies, improving the measurement of poverty, and understanding social mobility across countries. Waldfogel holds a B.A. in psychology and social relations from Radcliffe College, an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a Ph.D. in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Jacob Mortenson
Jacob Mortenson is a contractor for the Joint Committee on Taxation. He is an applied microeconomist whose research interests include individual and corporate responses to taxation, retirement saving incentives, inequality, and regional economics. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Georgetown University in 2016.
Jacob Robbins
Jacob Robbins was a Dissertation Scholar at Equitable Growth from 2017 – 2018.
Jacob Robbins is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, specializing in inequality and macroeconomics, and a nonresident scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. His research uses theory and data to understand key economic trends in the U.S. economy, such as changes in inequality, the rise of monopoly power, and secular stagnation. His research on secular stagnation was awarded the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics best paper of the year in 2020. He received a B.A. in economics and mathematics from Dartmouth College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Brown University.
Heather Sarsons
Heather Sarsons is an assistant professor of economics with research interests in labor, personnel, and behavioral economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Much of her work focuses on understanding how norms, stereotypes, and biases influence labor market outcomes and inequality. Prior to joining Booth, Sarsons was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto's GATE Institute and the university’s Economics Department. Sarsons received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a B.A. in economics from the University of British Columbia. While pursuing her Ph.D., she was also a visiting student at the London School of Economics.
Heidi Williams
Heidi Williams, a member of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee, is a professor of economics at Dartmouth College. Additionally, she is the director of science policy at the Institute for Progress, co-chair of J-PAL’s Science for Progress Initiative, and co-director of the innovation policy working group at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior, she was the Charles R. Schwab professor of economics and a professor, by courtesy, at Stanford Law School. She is a fellow of the Econometric Society and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and the ASHEcon Medal. Her research focuses on how society can best support science and innovation, and how we can best ensure that science and innovation generate broad benefits to society. Williams holds a B.A. in mathematics from Dartmouth College, a M.Sc. in development economics from Oxford University, and her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.
Guillermo Gallacher
Guillermo Gallacher is an associate economist at Indeed Hiring Lab. Previously, he was an economist and data scientist at Accenture Research (Argentina), and he was an assistant professor the at University of Manitoba. His research interests lie in the areas of labor and macroeconomics. He graduated with a licentiate in economics with honors from Universidad del CEMA. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
Hannah Rubinton
Hannah Rubinton is an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Her interests are in macroeconomics and economic geography. She has previously worked as a research analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University and her B.A. in mathematics and economics from McGill University.