I am a labor and public economist who employs quasi experimental techniques and field experiments to better understand the determinants of human capital. My work is in two main areas. I have published and ongoing work aimed at understanding the early-life determinants of human capital formation and another body of work aimed at understanding post-secondary education attainment. I am particularly interested in how public policies and student behaviors affect outcomes like major choice and persistence in higher education, especially among disadvantaged populations. The overarching goal of this agenda is to produce convincing evidence to help inform public policy decisions as they relate to human capital. More generally, this work has important implications for addressing inequality, as human capital is a central lever for economic mobility.
Kathleen Segerson is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Economics and at the University of Connecticut. She is an environmental economist, whose research focuses on the incentive effects of alternative environmental policy instruments, with applications in the following areas: groundwater contamination, hazardous waste management, land use regulation, climate change and nonpoint pollution from agriculture. She also works on ecosystem services and the protection of marine species. Dr. Segerson is a fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and of the American Agricultural Economics Association, and was recently elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
In my research, I examine the factors that drive chronic poverty in poor, agricultural settings. Often that means I focus on agricultural productivity and/or linked dynamics between biophysical systems and human welfare. I also do work on micronutrient malnutrition, and on intergenerational income and human capital transmission. I recently began work on mental health crisis response in the United States.
Juan Herreno joined the Department of Economics in July 2021. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University in May 2020, and spent 2020-21 as a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Business School. His primary interests are macroeconomics, monetary economics, and the macroeconomic effects of financial frictions.
Sheryl Ball is a Professor of Economics at Virginia Tech with appointments in Neuroscience and psychology. Her research uses theories and methods from Behavioral Economics, Experimental Economics, and Neuroeconomics. Her work explores individual decision-making and strategic behavior, for example, some of her current work asks how attention and physiological arousal are related to risk preferences. Dr. Ball received her bachelor’s degree with honors in mathematical methods in social sciences, and her masters and doctoral degrees in managerial economics and decision sciences from Northwestern University. She has served as Associate Dean at the Virginia Tech College of Science.
Jessica Leight is a Senior Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion unit at IFPRI; previously, she served as an assistant professor of economics at American University from 2017 to 2019 and Williams College from 2013 to 2017. She received a Ph.D. in economics at MIT in 2013, a M.Phil. in Economics at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar in 2008, and a B.A. from Yale University in 2006. Her research agenda focuses on human capital accumulation for women and girls as well as agricultural institutions and structural transformation, and has been funded by the Macarthur Foundation, the Fondation de France, USAID, the Department of Labor, and a number of other donors. She has conducted or is actively conducting fieldwork in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, India, Kenya, and Mozambique.
Alice Tianbo Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Economics and an affiliate faculty of Environmental Studies at Washington and Lee University. As an environmental and energy economist, she combines economics, climate science, and data science to tackle energy and climate policy issues. Her current research focuses on two areas 1) distributional impacts of energy infrastructure and energy access; 2) climate change impact, mitigation, and adaptation. More broadly, she is interested in harnessing economics for social and environmental equity. Prior to joining W&L, she was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University. She obtained a PhD from Columbia University and a B.A. in Economics, Statistics, and a minor in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. You can read more about her work at https://www.alicetianbozhang.com/ and follow her on
Twitter: @AliceTZhang
I am an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Economics Program at Oregon State University. I am also a Research Fellow at IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor), an Invited Researcher for the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL), and a Fellow of the Global Labor Organization (GLO). My research areas are development economics, labor economics, and the economics of education. My current work focuses on education policy in developing countries (including Rwanda, The Gambia, and India), and promoting student success in higher education in the U.S.
am a macroeconomist and monetary economist currently focused on financial stability issues. I have 25+ years of experience in public service; I have also spent some time teaching (in spring 2022, I taught a class at Yale). I have published a number of papers and worked with economists and research assistants from a range of backgrounds. More on my background can be seen on my personal webpage.