The 2024-2025 W.S. Woytinsky Lecture featuring Caroline Hoxby, the Scott and Donya Bommer Professor of Economics at Stanford University, the Director of the Economics of Education Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, will take place on Wednesday, November 20, 2024 from 2:30 PM - 4:00 PM in the Sumner and Laura Foster Library.
Trained as a public finance and labor economist, Hoxby is one of the world's leading scholars in the Economics of Education. Her pioneering work in the field was transformative because she saw that applying economic thinking to education generates many important insights. Her work often draws upon models of investment, incentives, market design, finance, optimal pricing, social insurance, and behavioral economics. In addition, Hoxby is an ardent promoter of the use of scientific methods (when feasible) in education research. Under her mentorship at the NBER, work in the Economics of Education has expanded enormously and now features some of the most advanced research in economics, conducted by a young vibrant group of scholars.
Hoxby best known work on elementary and secondary education includes numerous studies of the effects of school choice and competition on student achievement, rewards for teaching, and the productivity of schools. Her study of New York City's charter schools is the largest randomized evaluation of how charter schools affect achievement. The methods she pioneered for studying the causal effect that students have on their peers have been widely followed by other researchers. Hoxby also writes on public school finance equalization, class size, teacher incentives, and teacher unionization. Her ongoing research includes studies of Teach for America and how education affects economic growth.
Hoxby has a Ph.D. from MIT, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and obtained her baccalaureate degree summa cum laude from Harvard University.
Hoxby has received numerous academic honors and prizes including the John and Lydia Pearce Mitchell University Fellowship, Stanford Economics Teacher of the Year, and a Phi Beta Kappa prize.
University of Michigan Department of Economics
W. S. Woytinsky Lecture/Seminar Award (est. 1964)
2018 Esther Duflo
Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-founder and co- director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
"Every Child Counts: Transforming education systems around the world"
2018 Kerwin Charles
Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor and former interim Dean
University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy
"Some Forms and (Elusive) Effects of Prejudice in the Labor Market"
2016 Hal R. Varian
Chief Economist
Google
“Google Tools for Data”
“Economics & Technology: Careers Blending Two Fields”
2014 Professor Susan Athey
Stanford School of Business
Stanford University
“The Internet and the News Media”
2013 Professor Robert Hall
Hoover Institution and Department of Economics
Stanford University
“New Ideas about the Long-Lasting Collapse of Employment after the Financial Crisis”
2012 Professor Angus Deaton
Princeton University
“Randomized Controlled Trials and Economic Policy
2011-12 Professor David Card (Clark)
Class of 1950 Professor of Economics
Labor Studies Program Director, Center for Labor Economics
Econometrics Laboratory (EML) Director
University of California, Berkeley
“Theory and Method in Empirical Microeconomics: Where Are We, and Where Are We Going?”
2010 Professor Larry Samuelson
A. Douglas Melamed Professor of Economics
Yale University.
"Common Learning"
2009 Professor Mark Gertler
New York University
A Model of Unconventional Monetary Policy
2008 Professor Jeremy Bulow
Richard Stepp Professor of Economics
Graduate School of Business
Stanford University
“Winning Play in Spectrum Auctions"
2007 Professor Ernst Fehr
Chair for Microeconomics and Experimental Economic Research
Faculty of Economics and Computer Science
University of Zurich
"Limited Rationality"
2006 Stephen Morris, Princeton University
“Coordination without Common Knowledge”
2003 Randall Wright, University of Pennsylvania
"A Unified Framework for Monetary Theory and Policy Analysis"
2002 Glenn Loury
"Racial Stigma: Toward a New Paradigm for Discrimination Theory."
2001 Roger Noll
Stanford University
2000 Elhanan Helpman
Harvard University
2000 Claudia Goldin
“The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women’s Career and Marriage Decisions”
1999 Christopher Sims
Princeton University
1999 James Heckman (Nobel, Clark)
University of Chicago
1998 John Sutton
London School of Economics
1998 Roy Radner
New York University
1994/95 Peter Diamond
MIT
Marty Weitzman
Harvard University
1993/94 Paul Milgrom
Stanford
Tom Sargent
Stanford
1992/93 Richard Blundell
University College, London
Robert Lucas
Chicago
1991/92 Robert Barro
Harvard University
Jim Poterba
MIT
1989 Professor Zvi Grilliches
Department of Economics
Harvard University
1985 Professor Arthur Goldberger
University of Wisconsin
“Modeling the Economic Family.”
1981 Professor Alan S. Blinder
Princeton University
1977 Professor James N. Morgan
Professor of Economics and Program Director
University of Michigan
1972 Professor Alice Rivlin
Brookings Institution
“Social Policy: Alternate Strategies for the Federal Government”
1967 Professor Edward Denison
Brookings Institution
1965 Professor Gary Becker
Department of Economics
Columbia University
“Human capital and the personal distribution of income: an analytical approach”
