Ginger Zhe Jin is a professor of economics at the University of Maryland and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Most of her research focuses on information asymmetry among economic agents and how to provide information to overcome the information problem.

Her research has been published in leading economics, management, and marketing journals, with support from the National Science Foundation, the Net Institute, and the Sloan Foundation.

She was the director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics from January 2016 to July 2017 and an Amazon scholar from January 2019 to May 2020. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2000.

Jacob Robbins was a Dissertation Scholar (opens in a new tab) 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.

Ellora Derenoncourt is an assistant professor of economics at Princeton University and a member of the Industrial Relations Section of Princeton Economics. She is also the founder and faculty director for the Program for Research on Inequality at Princeton Economics. She works on labor economics, economic history, and the study of inequality.

Her recent work has focused on the northern backlash against the Great Migration and ensuing declines in black upward mobility and the role of federal minimum wage policy in racial earnings convergence during the Civil Rights Era. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

Ioana Marinescu is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice, and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She studies the labor market to craft policies that can enhance employment, productivity, and economic security.

Marinescu’s research expertise includes wage determination and monopsony power, antitrust law for the labor market, the universal basic income, Unemployment Insurance, the minimum wage, and employment contracts.

Her research has been published in leading academic journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Labor Economics, the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, and the Journal of Public Economics.

She has testified for policymakers, including before Congress and the Federal Trade Commission. Her research has been cited in many media outlets, including The New York Times, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal.

Matthew Staiger was a Dissertation Scholar (opens in a new tab) at Equitable Growth from 2020 – 2021.

Matthew Staiger earned his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Maryland. He is a former dissertation scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. His primary field is labor economics, with a particular interest in studying issues related to inequality and economic mobility.

His dissertation combines administrative and survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau to study how the career paths of young workers are shaped by the resources of their parents. Prior to starting graduate school, Matthew worked in South Africa as a research fellow with the Economic Policy Research Institute.

Kyle Herkenhoff is an associate professor at the University of Minnesota and a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. He received grants in the past while an employee at the University of Minnesota.

He has interests in macroeconomics, applied macroeconomics, and real estate economics.

His dissertation research, which was awarded the Welton Prize in Macroeconomics at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Institute of Humane Studies Dissertation Fellowship, looked at the rise of unsecured credit access among the unemployed during the mid-1980s and its role in jobless recoveries.

He received his B.A. in business economics from the the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics.

Joya Misra is a professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research and teaching primarily focus on social inequality, including inequalities by gender and gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, citizenship, parenthood status, and educational level.

Her work falls into the subfields of political sociology, economic sociology, public policy, work and labor, family, race/gender/class, comparative historical sociology, and welfare states. Her work has appeared in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Gender & Society, Social Forces, Social Problems, and numerous other professional journals and edited volumes.

Misra edited Gender & Society from 2011-2015. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology from Emory University and her B.A. in religion from Centenary College.

Gonçalo Pessa Costa was a Dissertation Scholar (opens in a new tab) at Equitable Growth from 2022 – 2023.

Gonçalo Pessa Costa is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. In his dissertation, Costa studies the workings of housing rental markets, focusing on rent determination, landlords’ market power, and housing inequalities.

As a Dissertation Scholar, he tested some of the predictions of his theoretical work through a quasi-natural experiment in New York City’s Stuyvesant Town, the largest rental apartment complex in the United States. His other research fields include labor economics, the history of economic thought, and the study of inequalities.

Costa holds a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in economics from Lisbon’s Nova School of Business and Economics, and an M.Phil. in economics from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York.

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.