Lenore Palladino is an associate professor in the Department of Economics and School of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a research associate at the UMass Amherst Political Economy Research Institute and a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. She is also a nonresident scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Palladino’s research centers on the political economy of corporations and finance. She is the author of a book on the political economy of corporations, Good Company: Economic Policy After Shareholder Primacy, published by the University of Chicago Press. She frequently works with policymakers, media, and advocates on corporate and financial policy. She has testified on the impacts of shareholder primacy stock buybacks before the U.S. Congress’ Joint Economic Committee and the U.S. House Financial Services Committee. She has also written on financial transaction taxes, employee ownership, the macroeconomic effect of investing in the care economy, and the rise of fintech. Palladino holds a Ph.D. in economics from the New School University and a J.D. from Fordham Law School.
Expert Type: Nonresident Scholars
Adam Dean
Adam Dean is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at George Washington University and a nonresident scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. His research focuses on the political economy of international trade, labor politics, and the socioeconomic determinants of public health. His second book, Opening Up By Cracking Down, will be published by Cambridge University Press in October 2022. Dean received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Andria Smythe
Andria Smythe is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Howard University and a nonresident scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Her research interests include poverty, inequality, human capital, and intergenerational mobility. Her current research dossier includes work on student debt; business cycles and investment in higher education; college participation and racial differences in intergenerational mobility; and intergenerational transfers and wealth-building within families. In her work, Smythe emphasizes intergroup differences in the impact of a policy or shock as a way of shedding light on the sources of inequities in the economy. She earned her Ph.D. in economics from Temple University.
Priyanka Anand
Priyanka Anand is an associate professor in the Department of Health Administration and Policy at George Mason University and a nonresident scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. She is a health economist whose research focuses on disability policy and social safety nets, with a particular interest in their relationships with the labor market. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Yale University in 2012 and her B.A. in economics and political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Nirupama Rao
Nirupama Rao is an assistant professor of business economics and public policy at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. She is also a nonresident scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Her research concerns the economic effects of fiscal policy, focusing on the impact of policy on firm production, investment, and pricing decisions. She is a recipient of the National Tax Association Dissertation Award. Prior to graduate school, she worked at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She served as a senior economist from 2015–2016 at the White House Council of Economic Advisers in Washington, D.C. Rao holds a Ph.D. and a B.S. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Benjamin Schoefer
Benjamin Schoefer is an associate professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley and a nonresident scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. His research covers macroeconomics and labor economics. In much of his work, he uses microeconomic data and quasi-experimental variation generated by economic policies to study macroeconomic theories of wage determination and employment adjustment. He holds B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University.
Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat
Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat is the Mallya Professor of Women and Economics at Barnard College, Columbia University, and a nonresident scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. She is the co-leader for Policies and Inequalities of the Columbia University Population Research Center and a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Standing Committee on Reproductive Health, Equity, and Society. Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of the intergenerational transmission of poverty and inequality and has examined the effects of social programs, tax policy, labor market regulation, access to reproductive choice, and macroeconomic conditions. Ananat has received numerous awards for her scholarship, including the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, the Russell Sage Foundation Fellowship, the William T. Grant Foundation Fellowship, and the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Work-Family Research. In 2010, she served as senior economist for Labor, Education, and Welfare at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Ananat graduated from Williams College summa cum laude in mathematics and political economy, received her Master of Public Policy from the Ford School at the University of Michigan, and earned a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Daniel Reck
Daniel Reck is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Maryland and a nonresident scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Prior, he was an assistant professor at the London School of Economics. His research interests include tax evasion and behavioral welfare economics. His research has been published in the Journal of Public Economics, American Economic Journal, American Economic Review, and Journal of Political Economy. His recent and ongoing work on tax evasion studies the effect of new enforcement policies on tax evasion via offshore accounts in the United States, and the relationship between tax evasion and the distribution of income and wealth. He also studies optimal policymaking in behavioral economics and the effects of minimum wage rules on youth employment. Reck received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Carlos Fernando Avenancio-Leon
Carlos Fernando Avenancio-León is an assistant professor of finance at the University of California San Diego and a nonresident scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. He is an economist whose agenda focuses on how complex institutional structures mask or generate economic inequality. In particular, his work addresses the relationship between political or financial institutions and economic redistribution, with special emphasis on its implications for disadvantaged communities. Avenancio-León received a Ph.D. in finance from the University of California, Berkeley and a J.D. from the University of Puerto Rico.
Mark Zandi
Mark M. Zandi is chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, where he directs economic research, and a nonresident scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Zandi is a co-founder of the company Economy.com, which Moody’s purchased in 2005. Zandi’s broad research interests encompass macroeconomics, financial markets, and public policy. He has analyzed the economic impact of various tax and government spending policies and assessed the appropriate monetary policy response to bubbles in asset markets. Zandi frequently testifies before Congress on topics and conducts regular briefings on the economy for corporate boards, trade associations, and policymakers at all levels. He is on the board of directors of MGIC, the nation’s largest private mortgage insurance company, and the Coleridge Initiative, a nonprofit that facilitates the use of data across government agencies to improve policy analysis and decision-making. He is often quoted in national and global publications and interviewed by major news media outlets, and is a frequent guest on CNBC, NPR, Meet the Press, CNN, and various other national networks and news programs.
Zandi earned his B.S. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.