Gabrielle Pepin is an economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Her research interests include public economics, labor economics, and public policy. She is especially interested in topics related to tax-and-transfer programs, including child care subsidies, cash assistance, and Unemployment Insurance. In her research, Pepin studies effects of the Child and Dependent Care Credit on paid child care use and parents’ labor market outcomes, as well as implications of its design on caregiving and labor supply incentives. In other work, she estimates effects of time limits and interventions intended to increase application completion within the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Pepin is involved in evaluations of the Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment program for Unemployment Insurance beneficiaries. Her work has been featured in Public Finance Review, Southern Economic Journal, and Journal of Behavioral Public Administration. She was awarded the 2022 Georgescu-Roegen Prize for best academic article published in Southern Economic Journal. Pepin holds a Ph.D. in economics from Michigan State University and a B.S. in mathematical economics from the University of St. Thomas.
Expert Type: Grantee
David McMillon
David McMillon is an assistant professor of economics at Emory University, where he teaches a newly designed course, The Economics of Systemic Racism. The goal of his work is to use systems thinking to combat systemic discrimination. He draws on his training to explore how features of complex systems can be exploited to amplify the effects of racial equity-focused interventions, for the same reasons they amplify inequities in the status quo. This includes work on the academic achievement, the school-to-prison pipeline, reparations and wealth inequality, and formal models of systemic discrimination. McMillon is also affiliated with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility, and the Samuel Dubois Cook Center for Racial Equity. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. He holds master’s degrees from the University of Michigan in applied mathematics and in industrial and operations engineering, and a bachelor’s degree in mathematical sciences.
Karen Kopecky
Karen Kopecky is an economic and policy adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Her major field of study is macroeconomics with particular interests in inequality, public finance, insurance markets, retirement, health, family, and computational methods for macroeconomic modeling. Kopecky is a visiting scholar of the Economics Department at Emory University. She has been serving as an associate editor at Quantitative Economics since July 2022. Prior to joining the Cleveland Fed in 2023, she was an economist at the Atlanta Fed. She spent 4 years as an assistant professor of economics at the University of Western Ontario. Kopecky received her Ph.D. in economics in 2007 and her master’s degree in economics in 2003, both from the University of Rochester. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and her Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2001.
Svetlozar Nestorov
Svetlozar Nestorov is an associate professor of information systems at Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business. His research interests include data mining, high-performance computing, and web technologies. Nestorov received his undergraduate degrees in computer science and mathematics, his M.S. in computer science, and his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University.
Jake Rosenfeld
Jake Rosenfeld is professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis and a resident fellow of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy. His research focuses on the political and economic determinants of inequality in the United States and other advanced democracies. Rosenfeld’s 2014 book, What Unions No Longer Do (Harvard University Press), shows in detail the consequences of organized labor’s decline. His 2021 book, You’re Paid What You’re Worth and Other Myths of the Modern Economy (Harvard University Press), seeks to answer the basic question of who gets what and why? Rosenfeld received his Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology from Princeton University and his bachelor’s degree in sociology from Haverford College.
Patrick Denice
Patrick Denice is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. His research focuses on nontraditional and extended pathways to and through postsecondary education, the implications of workplace policies and institutions for workers’ wages, and how public-school choice policies shape patterns of racial and ethnic segregation and stratification within and across schools. Some of his recent work has been published in the Sociology of Education, Demography, and the Journal of Urban Affairs. Denice earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Washington in 2016.
Jennifer Laird
Jennifer Laird is an assistant professor of sociology at Lehman College in the City University of New York. Her research uses quantitative and qualitative methods to understand poverty, hardship, and inequality. She has published articles that investigate the sources of poverty differences across U.S. states, employment inequality in the public sector, and immigrant labor force participation. Her research has been published in Demography, Social Science Research, and the American Sociological Review. Since beginning her position as assistant professor in 2018, Laird has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator in external grant awards totaling more than $1.3 million, with sources including the National Science Foundation and the New America Foundation. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Washington in 2016.
Elizabeth Davis
Elizabeth E. Davis is a professor of applied economics at the University of Minnesota. She specializes in the study of public policies relating to children, families, education, and the workforce, particularly in the context of limited resources or low incomes. Her recent research has focused on measuring disparities in access to high-quality child care and the role of child care subsidies in families’ decisions about employment and the type, quality, and stability of child care arrangements. Davis recently served as a member of two National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committees that produced the consensus study reports “Transforming the Financing Early Care and Education” in 2018 and “Vibrant and Healthy Kids: Aligning Science, Practice and Policy to Advance Health Equity” in 2019. For more than 20 years, she has advised state and federal agencies on child care subsidy policy. Davis earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in economics from the University of Michigan and her B.A., summa cum laude, in economics and environmental studies from Bowdoin College.
Ivan Rudik
Ivan Rudik is an associate professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. His research focuses on the economics of climate change and the design of climate change and air pollution policies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and B.S. from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Jacob William Faber
Jacob William Faber is an associate professor at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and holds a joint appointment in NYU’s Sociology Department. His research and teaching focuses on spatial inequality. He leverages observational and experimental methods to study the mechanisms responsible for sorting individuals across space and how the distribution of people by race and class interacts with political, social, and ecological systems to create and sustain economic disparities. Faber earned his Ph.D. in sociology from NYU and worked as a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Sociology at Princeton University. He also graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with master’s degrees in telecommunications policy and urban studies and planning, and a bachelor’s degree in management science.