Participants

Dan Black

Professor, Deputy Dean, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago

Dan A. Black is a professor and deputy dean at the Harris School and a senior fellow at the National Opinion Research Center. He serves as Research Director of the CWICstat program, a research group that aides Chicago in their workforce development programs. He currently serves as the principal investigator for the 1997 Cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Labor Economics, Labour Economics, and Growth and Change. His research focuses on labor economics and applied econometrics. His papers have appeared in the top journals in economics, statistics, and demography. He has served on panels for the Census Bureau, the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the National Academy of Science and has served as a consultant for the New Zealand and Australian governments.

Areas of Expertise
Labor economics and applied econometrics, focusing on family formations, household production, urban labor markets, human capital theory and the economic progress of African Americans.

Relevant Work

• 2006 (with A. Haviland, S. Sanders, and L. Taylor) “Why Do Minority Men Earn Less? A Study of Wage Differentials among the Highly Educated” Review of Economics and Statistics May 2006 88(2) 300-13.
• 2006 (with J. Smith) “Estimating the Returns to College Quality with Multiple Proxies for Quality” Journal of Labor Economics July 2006(24:3) 701-28.
• 2005 (with T. McKinnish and S. Sanders) “Tight Labor Markets and the Demand for Education: Evidence from the Coal Boom and Bust” Industrial and Labor Relations Review October 2005 59(1) 3-16.
• 2005(with K. Daniel and J. Smith) “College Quality and the Wages in the United States” German Economic Review August 2005 6(3) 415-43.
• 2004 (with J. Smith) “How Robust is the Evidence on the Effects of College Quality? Evidence from Matching” Journal of Econometrics August 2004 121(1-2) 99-124
• 2003 (with S. Sanders and L. Taylor) “Measurement of Higher Education in the Census and CPS” Journal of the American Statistical Association September 2003 98(463) 545-54.
• 2003 (with T. McKinnish and S. Sanders) “Does the Availability of High-Wage Jobs for Low-Skilled Men Affect Welfare Expenditures? Evidence from Shocks to the Coal and Steel Industries” Journal of Public Economics September 2003 87(9-10) 1919-40.
   

David Bravo

Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Chile, Director, Microdata Center

David Bravo runs the University of Chile’s MicroData Center - a center of excellence, dedicated to furthering socioeconomic knowledge through the production and analysis of microdata. The objective of the MicroData Center is to carry out research that influences the design and implementation of public policies at a national and Latin American level. In November 2007, the MicroData Center was distinguished as a Center of Excellence by the Millenium Scientific Initiative. The project presented was rated outstanding in the first open contest for Social Science projects organized by the Ministry of Planning.

Areas of Expertise
Labor Markets, Social Security, Poverty and Income Distribution, Education, Program Evaluation

Relevant Work

• 2010 (with S. Mukhopadhyay and P. Todd) “Effects of school reform on education and labor market performance: Evidence from Chile’s universal voucher system” Quantitative Economics 2010, 47-95
   

James Cronin

University Professor Emeritus in Physics, University of Chicago

James Cronin shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1980 for showing that the laws of nature operate differently on matter and antimatter. Without this difference, no matter would exist in the universe at all. More recently, Cronin co-led the effort to build the Auger Observatory in Argentina. The Auger collaboration, consisting of 250 scientists from 16 countries, aims to track down the mysterious source of rare but extremely powerful cosmic rays that periodically bombard Earth. Cronin's honors include the National Medal of Science and election to the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London.

Areas of Expertise
Auger Observatory (Argentina), Enrico Fermi, Physics: Particle physics, Astrophysics: Cosmic rays

Relevant Work
Education and outreach at the Auger Observatory encourage and support a wide range of efforts that link schools and the public with the Auger scientists and the science of cosmic rays, particle physics, and associated technologies. Efforts there have included the construction of the James Cronin School in Malargüe in November 2006, public lectures, school visits, a planetarium, courses for science teachers and a scholarship program which brings top students from the region to the United States for continued technical training.

Arturo Fontaine

Director, Centro de Estudios Públicos; Professor of Philosophy, University of Chile

Arturo Fontaine was born in Santiago de Chile in 1952, and studied philosophy at the University of Chile and Columbia University in New York. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chile and Director of the Centro de Estudios Públicos (Center for Public Studies) in Santiago. Fontaine contributes frequently to publications within the Latin American sphere, such as Letras Libres, Nexos, El Mercurio, Página/12 and Estudios Públicos. He is the author of various poetry books and novels. For his most recognized novel, “Oír su voz” (Planeta, 1992, reedited by Alfaguara), Fontaine was considered one of the most relevant voices of the “new Chilean novel” by the Times Literary Supplement.

Relevant Work

• 2002 Equidad y Educación: 5 Proposiciones, Centro de Estudios Públicos, Vol. 254 (Jan. 2002), pp. 1-22.
   

Paul Goren

Lewis Sebring Executive Director, Consortium on Chicago School Research

Paul Goren is the Lewis-Sebring director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute.

Goren served as senior vice president of The Spencer Foundation from 2001-2010 and as executive director of the Spencer Forum focusing on the dissemination of research to the policy and practice communities. Previously, Goren was the director of Child and Youth Development at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. A former middle-school teacher, Goren worked as executive director (assistant superintendent) for Policy and Strategic Services in the Minneapolis Public Schools from 1995-98 and as a policy analyst and educational researcher in the San Diego City Schools in the mid-1980s. He worked in and subsequently directed the education policy studies division of the National Governors' Association (NGA) in Washington, DC between 1991 and 1995.

Goren has written on professional development and public engagement for the NGA, served as chief accountability officer in the Minneapolis Schools where he helped develop capacity for data driven-decision making, and led the Spencer Foundation’s efforts to disseminate studies and findings to multiple audiences. Along with numerous presentations at philanthropic, practitioner, policy, and research forums, he served on the National Academy of Science task force on How People Learn. His writing includes commentaries for the National Society for the Study of Education yearbook on Developing the Teacher Workforce, and for Education Week on the relationship of foundations and philanthropy to school districts. Goren received the Ian Axford (New Zealand) Fellowship in public policy through NZ Fulbright to study Maori education policy.

Goren serves on the board of TERC, a science and mathematics curriculum developer, and is on the executive committee of the Board of Y.O.U., a social service and support agency for students in the Evanston, IL public schools. He also serves on the Boards of the Donors Forum of Illinois and the national Grantmakers for Education organization.

Goren holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University, a master of public affairs degree from the LBJ School at the University of Texas, and a B.A. from Williams College.

James Heckman

Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and in the College and the Harris School of Public Policy; Director, Center for Social Program Evaluation

Heckman, a co-recipient of the the 2000 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, is a prominent scholar of the impact of social programs and the methodologies used to measure their effects. His research has given policymakers important new insights into such areas as education, job-training programs, minimum-wage legislation, anti-discrimination law and civil rights.

He is the author of Longitudinal Analysis of Labor Market Data (Cambridge University Press, 1985); Law and Employment: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean (University Of Chicago Press, 2004); Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? (The MIT Press, 2005); and numerous articles on labor, education and civil-rights policies. In the early 1990s, his pioneering research on the outcomes of people who obtain the GED certificate received national attention. His findings, which questioned the alleged benefits of the degree, spurred debates across the country on the merits of obtaining the certificate.

His recent research focuses on human development and lifecycle skill formation, with a special emphasis on the economics of early childhood. He is also working on the impact of regulation and deregulation in Latin American labor markets. In addition, Heckman has shown developed general-equilibrium models of the earnings equation and has shown the importance of accounting for general equilibrium in evaluating large-scale social programs.

He received the John Bates Clark Award of the American Economic Association in 1983.

Areas of Expertise
Job training, labor markets, labor supply, early childhood education

Relevant Work

• 2007 (with F. Cunha) The Technology of Skill Formation, The American Economic Review, Vol. 97, No. 2 (May, 2007), pp.31-47
• 2007 The Economics, Technology and Neuroscience of Human Capability Formation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, Vol. 104, No. 33 (Aug. 14, 2007), pp. 13250-13255
• 2001 (with Y. Rubinstein) The Importance of Non-cognitive Skills: Lessons from the GED Testing Program The American Economic Review, Vol. 91, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Hundred Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May, 2001), pp. 145-149
• 2002 (with P. Carneiro) The Evidence on Credit Constraints in Post-Secondary Schooling The Economic Journal, Vol. 112, No. 482 (Oct., 2002) pp. 705-734
• 2001 (with S. Cameron) Life Cycle Schooling and Dynamic Selection Bias: Models and Evidence for Five Cohorts of American Males, The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 106, No. 2 (April (1998), pp. 262-333
• 1999 (with J. Cawley and E. Vytlacil) On Policies to Reward the Value Added by Educators, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 81, No. 4 (Nov., 1999), pp. 720-727
   

Edward "Rocky" Kolb

Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Chair, Department of Astronomy, University of Chicago

Rocky Kolb's field of research is the application of elementary particle physics to the very early universe. He particularly focuses on attempting to understand physical processes that occurred in the very earliest moments of the big bang. In these very early moments the density, energy and pressure of the universe resembled the conditions obtained in the collisions of particles at high-energy accelerators. He is a founding head of the NASA/Fermilab Astrophysics Group. His book Blind Watchers of the Sky, written for the general public, received the 1996 Emme award from the American Astronautical Society. He also is a co-author of The Early Universe, the standard textbook on particle physics and cosmology.

Areas of Expertise
Kolb's research deals with the application of fundamental physics (in particular particle physics and general relativity) to the very early universe.

Relevant Work
Rocky Kolb is the University of Chicago representative in the partnership of the Giant Magellan Telescope, to begin construction at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile in 2012, and to join the twin Magellan telescopes already on the same site, which is one of the world’s leading observatories. As partners in the Magellan telescope projects, Chicago scientists receive a share of observing time, a critical component of pioneering cosmological research.

Professor Kolb works with the university’s STOMP (Science and Technology Outreach and Mentoring) Program, designed to augment the inquiry-based science opportunities available to elementary students; provide teachers with opportunities to observe and participate in state-of-the-art laboratory research; and utilize University of Chicago faculty and students as science resources and role models.

Sarah Kremsner

Chief Performance Officer, Chicago Public Schools

As Chief Performance Officer, Sarah is responsible for creating a comprehensive performance management system. She is also the lead on the strategic changes implemented since 2009. Sarah served as Vice President for Performance Management at CTA. She is a graduate of the University of Iowa and the University of Chicago’s Irving B. Harris School for Public Policy. Before joining CTA, Sarah served as senior policy staff in several positions at the City of Chicago, including the Office of Budget and Management and the Office of Emergency Management and Communications. Sarah also worked as a legislative assistant and community organizer in Washington, D.C.

Ofer Malamud

Assistant Professor, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago

Ofer Malamud primarily conducts research in the fields of labor economics and the economics of education. His work focuses on the labor market outcomes associated with general and specific education. In particular, he has examined the relative returns to academic and vocational education in Romania and the trade–off between early specialization and the gains from delaying the choice of a major field of study in Britain. He has also studied the effect of education on regional mobility using the unintended effect of attending college to avoid the Vietnam draft, and most recently, the effect of home computer use on child and adolescent outcomes.

Malamud received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 2004, where he also graduated magna cum laude with a BA in economics and philosophy. He is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economics Research and a faculty affiliate at the University of Chicago's Population Research Center and the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy.

Areas of Expertise
Education Policy, Labor Economics

Relevant Work

• “General Education vs. Vocational Training: Evidence from an Economy in Transition,” (with Cristian Pop-Eleches). Forthcoming at the Review of Economics and Statistics
• “The Structure of European Higher Education in the Wake of the Bologna Reforms.” Forthcoming book chapter in American Universities in a Global Market (ed. Charles Clotfelter) NBER
• “Discovering One’s Talent: Learning from Academic Specialization.” Forthcoming at the Industrial and Labor Relations Review.
• “Breadth vs. Depth: The Timing of Specialization in Higher Education,” Forthcoming at Labour “Home Computer Use and the Development of Human Capital,” (with Cristian Pop-Eleches). Conditional Acceptance at the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
• “School Tracking on Access to Higher Education among Disadvantaged Groups,” (with Cristian Pop-Eleches). Revise and Resubmit at the Journal of Public Economics
   

Susan Mayer

Professor and former Dean, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago

Mayer is the author of several articles and book chapters on the measurement of poverty, the consequences for poor children growing up in poor neighborhoods, and how income affects a child's well-being. Mayer's current research is on the effects of economic inequality and economic segregation on children and adolescents and currently, is leading a randomized experimental trial in Brazil aimed at improving the cognitive and non-cognitive skills of children in Brazil by improving educational instruction, specifically through the use of technology. She and David Bravo have submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Education, Chile, to distribute the same technology applications in primary schools. She is the author of the book What Money Can't Buy: Family Income and Children's Life Chances and co-editor with Paul Peterson of the book Earning and Learning: How Schools Matter.

Areas of Expertise:
Education Policy, Child and Family Policy, Inequality and Poverty, Welfare Reform, Economic Hardship, Economic Segregation

Relevant Work
Books

• and Paul E. Peterson (eds.). 1999. Earning and Learning: How Schools Matter. (1999). Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press.
• 1997. What Money Can't Buy: Family Income and Children's Life Chances. (1997), Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
• and Leonard Lopoo. (2008) “Government Spending and Intergenerational Mobility” Journal of Public Economics, 92(1-2): 139-158.
• Ludwig, Jens and Susan E. Mayer. 2006. “ Culture’ and the Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty: The Prevention Paradox.” The Future of Children 16(2): 175-196.
• and Leonard Lopoo. (2005). “Has the Intergenerational Transmission of Economic Status Changed?” Journal of Human Resources, XL (1): 169- 185.
• and Ankur Sarin. (2005). “An Assessment of Some Mechanisms Linking Economic Inequality and Infant Mortality.” Social Science and Medicine, 60(2): 439-455.
• Greg Duncan, Ariel Kalil, , Robin Tepper and Monique Payne (2005). “The Apple Does Not Fall Far From the Tree” in Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success edited by Sam Bowles and Melissa Osbourne. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press.
   

Colm O’Muircheartaigh

Dean and Professor, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago

Dean O'Muircheartaigh is an internationally recognized authority on survey sampling. His research spans the topics of measurement errors in surveys, cognitive aspects of question wording, and latent variable models for nonresponse. He is Vice President for Statistics and Methodology in the National Opinion Research Center. O'Muircheartaigh is an associate editor of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series A), and a member of the editorial committees of the Journal of Applied Statistics, Statistics in Transition, and the Journal of Official Statistics. Formerly president of the International Association of Survey Statisticians and a council member of the International Statistical Institute, O'Muircheartaigh is actively involved in these and other professional organizations. A fellow of the Royal Statistical Society since 1968, he was elected a fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1992 and is currently an elected member of its Council of Sections. He has published widely, most recently in the Public Opinion Quarterly, the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, the Journal of Official Statistics, and Quality and Quantity. He has taught statistics and survey sampling at the London School of Economics and Political Science at the Summer Institute of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.

Areas of Expertise
Cultural Policy, Statistical Analysis, Survey Analysis

Marcos Rangel

Professor, Department of Economics, University of Sao Paulo

Marcos A. Rangel researches topics on development economics, population economics, and applied econometrics. His work focuses on the nature of decision making within families in developing and developed countries. He recently published a study suggesting that alimony rights granted to women living in consensual unions in Brazil had a dramatic effect on the patterns of investment in children. This result indicates that mothers allocate more resources for investment in their children than their male partners. This work was chosen as the article of the year in 2006 by the Royal Economic Society.

His most recent research focuses on family networks and school enrollment: the response to social policy may be very much influenced by how extended families are organized (data from Mexico); discrimination in school: teacher evaluations do not correspond to standardized tests graded outside the school environment, uncovering that gender and race play a role (Brazilian public schools); personality traits and proficiency: descriptive analysis of early stages in a longitudinal study on the influence of personality traits over learning in Brazilian public middle and high schools.

Areas of Expertise
Economic Demography, Labor Market, Government Policy, Human Capital, Consumer Economics, Economics Program of Social Welfare, Economic Development Microeconomics.

Relevant Background

• 2009 (with M. Angelucci, G. De Giorgi and I. Rasul) “Family Networks and School Enrollment: Evidence from a Randomized Social Experiment”, Discussion Paper No. 4497, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit Institute for the Study of Labor, October, 2009
• 2009 "Understanding Racial Differences in Report Cards: Teacher's Proficiency, Behavior and Perceptions", presentation, Center for Public Policy, Institute of Education and Research.
• “Discrimination Goes to School? Racial Differences in the Acquisition of Pre-Market Skills”
• 2006 “Alimony Rights and the Intra-household Allocation of Resources: Evidence from Brazil” The Economic Journal, 116 (July), pp. 627.658.
• 2007 (with M. Angelucci and I. Rasul)Extended Family Networks in Rural Mexico: a descriptive analysis;. Forthcoming in Tim Besley and Raji Jayaraman (eds.), CESifo Conference on Institutions and Development, MIT Press.