Natasha Pilkauskas is an associate professor of public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Her research considers how demographic, social safety net, and economic shifts in the United States affect low-income families with children. Specifically, her work examines children’s shared living arrangements, economic insecurity among vulnerable populations, and the effects of cash transfers, such as tax credits, on the health and well-being of families with low incomes. Pilkauskas received her Ph.D. in social welfare policy from Columbia University, a master’s in public policy from Harvard University, and a B.A. in economics and sociology from Northwestern University.
Expert Type: Grantee
Katherine Michelmore
Katherine Michelmore is an associate professor of public policy at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Michelmore is a leading scholar and educator on the social safety net, education policy, labor economics, and economic demography. A research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, she is a recognized expert on the efficacy of the Earned Income Tax Credit and its impact on children. Previously, she was assistant professor of public administration and international affairs at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School. Michelmore completed her Ph.D. in policy analysis and management at Cornell University. She holds a B.A. in economics and psychology from Wesleyan University.
Eliza Forsythe
Eliza Forsythe is an assistant professor in the Labor and Employment Relations School and the Department of Economics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In addition to studying recessions, her research spans several areas of labor economics, including the impacts of technological change and public policy on workers and employers. She has received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation, the Upjohn Institute, and the U.S. Department of Labor, and has presented her research on inequality and the impacts of recessions on disadvantaged workers to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Before joining the University of Illinois, Forsythe was a postdoctoral scholar at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her B.A. in economics and mathematics from Mills College.
Ludwig Straub
Ludwig Straub is an assistant professor of economics at Harvard University’s Department of Economics. He has worked on the relationship between rising economic inequality and macroeconomic trends, as well as the propagation of fiscal and monetary policy in settings with inequality among households. He has recently studied the sectoral propagation of shocks in the recent COVID-19 crisis. Straub received his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018 and holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in mathematics and physics.
Brennan Williams
Brennan Williams is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Virginia’s Department of Economics and an affiliate of the Environmental Inequality Lab. His research seeks to understand the economic consequences of environmental change. His work has explored the long-term effects of exposure to natural disasters during early childhood and the distributional consequences of environmental risk.
Disa M. Hynsjo
Disa M. Hynsjö was a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Yale University. She passed away in July 2021 because of complications from a rare, sudden, and brief illness. She was at work on a remarkable set of projects, including the distribution of family income; the effects of children and partners on the careers of women; the long-term effects of “redlining” of U.S. neighborhoods in the 1930s; and the effects of technical change on the demand for and return to skill. Hynsjö would have finished her Ph.D. in May 2022, and she had a very promising career ahead of her.
Jonathan Borowsky
Jonathan Borowsky is a researcher in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. His research interests focus on applying models and methods from his training in economics to understand questions related to early childhood care and education policy. Borowsky was an OPRE Child Care Policy Research Scholar in 2019–2020. His dissertation research used administrative data from Minnesota’s CCDF program to study the role of local variation in child care supply in the child care decisions of families receiving child care subsidies. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota, his J.D. from Harvard Law School, his M. Ec. in economics from The University of New South Wales, and his A.B. in economics from Amherst College.
Wendy Morrison
Wendy Morrison is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Columbia University starting her fourth year. Her research focuses on how household and worker heterogeneity affect the transmission of monetary and fiscal policy. Her dissertation studies how monetary policy stimulates labor income unequally across occupations, making labor markets less effective at transmitting monetary stimulus. Morrison earned her B.A. from the University of Virginia and her M.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics.
German Gutiérrez
German Gutierrez is a Ph.D. candidate in finance at New York University Stern School of Business. His research interests are in macroeconomics and corporate finance, with a focus on market power of large firms. His dissertation studies the evolution, market power, and optimal regulation of Amazon.com Inc. using a mixture of theoretical models and empirical analysis. He holds a B.S. and M.Eng. degrees in operations research engineering from Cornell University and an M.Phil. in finance from NYU Stern.
Cherrie Bucknor
Cherrie Nicole Bucknor is a Ph.D. student in sociology at Harvard University. Her research broadly examines the causes and consequences of economic and racial inequality in wealth, income, and the labor market. Her current projects examine how racial disparities in extended-family wealth contribute to disparities in the transition to homeownership, as well as the impact of right-to-work laws on Black workers. Bucknor has previously worked as a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, where she conducted research on the labor market experiences of poor and otherwise-marginalized workers and the benefits of union representation. Her work is supported by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Bucknor holds a B.A. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Public Administration from American University.