National Bureau of Economic Research

State & Hill

Faculty news, fall 2024

Dec 17, 2024

William G. Axinn is the interim director of the Ford School’s International Policy Center. He recently published “Early-life risk factors for depression among young adults in the United States general population: Attributable risks and gender...

Top row (from left to right): Sarah Cohodes, Yusuf Neggers, Morela Hernandez, Paula Lantz. Bottom row (from left to right): Katherine Michelmore, Yousif Hassan, Barry Rabe, Kevin Stange.

News

Michelmore and Pilkauskas discuss the benefits of tax credits

Oct 9, 2023

Over the past few months, Ford School associate professors Katherine Michelmore and Natasha Pilkauskas have been discussing their research and insights on the 2021 Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit in a wide array of outlets. Here...

Natasha Pilkauskas and Katherine Michelmore

News

U-M Professor Amanda Kowalski Receives Econometrics Award

Apr 27, 2023

Health economist Amanda Kowalski, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan and a faculty associate of the Population Studies Center and the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research, received the...

Publication

Learning from lottery-based evaluations of early education programs

Apr 19, 2023

The value of Pre-K education has been widely acknowledged through decades of research. However, much of that research has come from studying older and often smaller programs than those currently being implemented across the country. To determine how...

Kindergarten teacher with students at a table

Publication

Yang provides insight into the mistreatment of migrant workers

Jan 20, 2023

International migrant workers are at major risk of suffering abuses from their employers. Migrants who work for private households as domestic workers (DWs) are considered especially vulnerable given that they live in their employers’ homes where...

Publication

Stange research quantifies “brain drain”

Sep 23, 2022

Many states invest heavily in their institutions of higher education only to see graduates leave for employment opportunities. To better understand that dynamic, Ford School Professor Kevin Stange and his colleagues developed a new measure of labor...

Photo of many rows of soon-to-be graduates seated in an auditorium

Publication

Stange examines data bias caused by college graduates' out-of-state migration

Sep 7, 2022

When examining the effect on the labor market of post-secondary education in a particular state, researchers often use administrative outcome data – statewide statistics that look at university graduates and the effect on their employment. Yet when...

Publication

EPI studies Flint water crisis effects on academic outcomes

May 19, 2022

Math achievement for school-age children in Flint decreased and the proportion of children with special needs increased as a result of the Michigan city's water crisis during 2014-16, according to a new University of Michigan study. Those are the...

Photo of the Flint Water Plant water tower in Flint, Michigan

News

Michelmore appointed as NBER research associate

Apr 25, 2022

Ford School professor Katherine Michelmore has been named as one of 23 new research associates by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). NBER is is a private, nonpartisan organization that facilitates cutting-edge investigation and...

In the Media

HAIL program research discussed in Forbes

Apr 6, 2022 Forbes

Forbes magazine notes, "Simplicity Matters For Free College," citing a recent U-M Education Policy Initiative study, The Power of Certainty: Experimental Evidence on the Effective Design of Free Tuition Programs. "The simplicity of the message from...

Aerial of U-M central campus including Weill Hall

Publication

Michelmore and research team find unconditional, pre-admission free tuition policies are most effective

Apr 1, 2022

The HAIL Scholarship program was launched in 2016, with considerable input from Ford School professors Katherine Michelmore, Susan Dynarski, and Stephanie Owen about how to reach high achieving, low-income students in Michigan. A follow-up study...

Publication

Johnson's study helps analyze thriving economy

Feb 23, 2022

A recent Washington Post article used a paper co-authored by David Johnson, director of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and Ford School professor by courtesy, to analyze American bank accounts. "People were much slower to spend their...

Publication

Working paper assesses employer perception of college majors and skills

Feb 1, 2022

What are the skills that employers expect college graduates to bring to the job? A new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper from Ford School professor Kevin Stange and doctoral candidate Shawn Martin, along with two other colleagues,...

Photo of a computer screen displaying an online listing of job ads

State & Hill

Faculty findings, fall 2021

Dec 13, 2021

Who would pay if we stop using natural gas? New research co-authored by economist Catherine Hausman considers the equity impacts of transitioning from natural gas to other energy sources. According to the U.S. Energy Information...

Yellow gas pipes in natural gas treatment plant

Publication

Poor urban, rural areas could bear financial burden of move from natural gas to electricity for energy needs

Aug 5, 2021

The push for consumers to go electric for their energy needs has significant environmental benefits as the world deals with the disruptive, deadly effects of climate change. Yet the economic burden of a big switch could fall more on lower income,...

Publication

Teaching and incentives prove complementary to promote learning about COVID-19

Jul 8, 2021

Does providing financial incentives to learners enhance teaching about COVID-19, or hinder it? That is the question that Dean Yang, professor of public policy and economics, and his research team asked in their study, “Teaching and Incentives:...

Photo of women in Mozambique, masked and socially distanced, waiting in a queue

Publication

Yang and Montero’s research looks at the development effects of religious festivals

Jun 25, 2021

How does observance of religious festivals influence economic growth? Ford School faculty Dean Yang and Eduardo Montero looked at Catholic patron saint day festivals in Mexico to measure the development impact on municipalities that celebrate the...

News

Wolfers co-authored paper looks at systemic sexism in economics

Feb 28, 2021

A paper on which Ford School economics professor Justin Wolfers collaborated (with Pascaline Dupas, Alicia Sasser Modestino, Muriel Niederle, and a broader set of 97 economist collaborators known as the Seminar Dynamics Collective), “Gender and the...

News

Research into action: Hausman’s research key to new legislation

Dec 15, 2020

Methane is the primary component of natural gas, a greenhouse gas with 34 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. It has been estimated that more than one percent of methane in the U.S. supply chain escapes into the atmosphere, much of...

Professor Leahy's latest paper studies the economic effects of wishful thinking

Apr 12, 2019

In a new paper entitled “Wishful Thinking” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, co-authors Andrew Caplin (a professor of economics at the New York University) and John Leahy from the University of Michigan, analyze the economic...

New research unearths the discrepancies of higher ed costs

Dec 6, 2018

Not all degrees are of equal cost in the world of higher education. That is what Kevin Stange’s, assistant professor at the Ford School, new research paper reveals, as reported in Inside Higher Ed. “Why Teaching Engineering Costs More Than Teaching...

News

Bloomberg cites Catherine Hausman - oil executive pay disproportionate to oil price

Sep 21, 2018

In “How Oil Bosses Make Their Own Luck,” Bloomberg Opinion columnist Liam Denning reports that oil executive compensation continues to skyrocket in a disparate relation to oil prices. Instead of pay reflecting fluctuations in price, oil executives...

State & Hill

Measuring higher ed performance: Kevin Stange on the numerator and denominator

Dec 15, 2017

As Kevin Stange sees it, there's a conspicuously missing link in much of the higher education decision-making process. "The higher ed sector, as a productive entity, is a huge fraction of the U.S. economy," says Stange, who was promoted to...

Jacob, Stange, De Vlieger: “Measuring instructor effectiveness in higher education.”

Jan 16, 2017

Ford School professors Brian Jacob and Kevin Stange, and Michigan Economics PhD candidate Pieter De Vlieger, published "Measuring instructor effectiveness in higher education," a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, on November...

Michelmore and Dynarski on understanding income differences in student achievement

Jul 1, 2016

Katherine Michelmore and Susan Dynarski have written a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper on “The gap within the gap: Using longitudinal data to understand income differences in student achievement," released in July...

Susan Dynarski and Judith Scott-Clayton on “Tax benefits for college attendance”

Mar 1, 2016

“Tax benefits for college attendance," a paper by Susan Dynarski and Judith Scott-Clayton, appears in the March 2016 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper series. ABSTRACTNational efforts to promote college enrollment are...

Kathryn Dominguez nominated to serve on Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors

Jul 20, 2015

President Obama said Monday he’ll nominate University of Michigan professor Kathryn Dominguez to serve on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.Dominguez is professor of public policy and economics at U-M and research associate at the...

Jacob testifies in Atlanta Public Schools cheating trial, cites figure ‘288 septillion’

Feb 10, 2015

Brian Jacob was called to testify last week as a witness for the prosecution in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating trial, in which prosecutors allege a dozen educators engaged in a “widespread, cleverly disguised” conspiracy to improve their...

New paper from Jacob, McCall, and Stange analyses the "College as Country Club"

Jan 29, 2013

A new paper by Brian A. Jacob, Brian P. McCall, and Kevin M. Stange, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, is receiving attention from The Chronicle of Higher Education and other publications for its analysis of the pressure facing...

Washington Post quotes Betsey Stevenson on fiscal cliff deal

Dec 25, 2012

The Washington Post reports that it is unlikely that Democrats and Republicans will reach a deal an agreement on the looming fiscal cliff before Jan. 1. In what the article refers to as a "remarkable turnaround," Democrats want to make permanent the...