Education

Ph.D., macroeconomics and political economy, University of Michigan, 1996

Regents (U-M Graduate School) Fellowship
Rackham (U-M Graduate School) Predoctoral Fellowship
Alfred P. Sloan Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

B.A., College of William and Mary, 1987

 

Work Experience

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Senior Economist and Policy Advisor, 2007-
Senior Economist, 2003-2006

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Business

Visiting Associate Professor of Economics, Spring 2004; Spring 2005; Spring 2006

Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad, Iraq

Economist, May 2003-Sept. 2003; Jan. 2004-Feb. 2004

Council of Economic Advisers

Chief Economist, Feb. 2003-May 2003
Senior Staff Economist, July 2002-Jan. 2003; Sept 2003

Staff Economist, July 1994-June 1995

Harvard University, Department of Economics

Lecturer on Economics, 2003-
Assistant and Associate Professor, 1996-2002

Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies, 2002
Director of Undergraduate Studies, 1998-2001

Department of Economics, University of Michigan

Various teaching and research positions during graduate school, 1991-1994

Publications

Refereed journal articles

"Reducing Foreclosures." with Kristopher S. Gerardi, Lorenz Goette and Paul Willen. NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, forthcoming.

"Just the Facts: An Initital Analysis of the Subprime Crisis," with Kristopher S. Gerardi, Lorenz Goette, and Paul Willen. 2008. Journal of Housing Economics, 17(4): 291-305.

"Negative Equity and Foreclosure: Theory and Evidence," with Kristopher S. Gerardi and Paul Willen. 2008. Journal of Urban Economics. 64(2): 234-245.

“The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime: Comment,” with Christopher F. Goetz. Quarterly Journal of Economics. (123):1 (February 2008)

“Economic Prospects and Policy in Iraq,” with William Block, Keith Crane, and Simon Gray. Journal of Economic Perspectives. 18(3). (Summer 2004): 47-70.

“Arbitraging a Discriminatory Labor Market: Black Workers at the Ford Motor Co., 1918-1947,” with Warren Whatley and Gavin Wright. Journal of Labor Economics. 21(3). (August 2003): 493-532.

“Trend Employment Growth and the Bunching of Job Creation and Destruction.” Quarterly Journal of Economics. 113(3). (August 1998): 809-834.

Other journal articles

Comment on “Volatility and Dispersion in Business Growth Rates: Publicly Traded and Privately Held Firms,” by S. Davis, J. Haltiwanger, R. Jarmin, and J. Miranda, NBER Macroeconomics Annual. (2006).

“Testing the (S,s) Model,” with John Leahy and Erik Hurst. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings. 90(2). (May 2000): 116-119.

Comment on “Contract-Theoretic Approaches to Wages and Displacement,” by W. J. den Haan, G. Ramey, and J. Watson, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review. (May/June 1999).

Working papers and other unpublished papers

"Why Did So Many People Make So Many Ex Post Bad Decisions? The Causes of the Foreclosure Crisis," with Kristopher S. Gerardi and Paul S. Willen. FRB Boston Public Policy Discussion Paper Series, paper no. 12-2.

"Oil and the Macroeconomy in a Changing World: A Conference Summary," with Jane S. Little. FRB Boston Public Policy Discussion Paper Series, paper no. 11-3, (2011).

"Reasonable People Did Disagree: Optimism and Pessimism About the U.S. Housing Market Before the Crash," with Kristopher Gerardi and Paul Willen. FRB Boston Public Policy Discussion Paper Series, paper no. 10-5, (2010).

"A Proposal to Help Distressed Homeowners: A Government Payment-Sharing Plan," with Jeff Fuhrer, Eileen Mauskopf and Paul Willen. FRB Boston Public Policy Brief Series, no. 09-1, (2009)

"Reducing Foreclosures," with Kristopher Gerardi, Lorenz Goette and Paul S. Willen. FRB Boston Public Policy Discussion Papers Series, no. 09-2 (2009).

"Negative Equity and Foreclosure: Theory and Evidence," with Kristopher Gerardi and Paul S. Willen. FRB Boston Public Policy Discussion Papers Series, no. 08-3. (2008)

"Subprime Facts: What (We Think) We Know about the Subprime Crises and What We Don't," with Kristopher Gerardi, Lorenz Goette and Paul S. Willen. FRB Boston Public Policy Discussion Papers Series, no. 08-2 (2008).

“Space and Time in Macroeconomic Panel Data: Young Workers and State-Level Unemployment Revisited.” FRB Boston Working Papers Series, no. 07-10 (2007).

“The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime: Comment,” with Christopher F. Goetz. FRB Boston Working Papers Series, no. 05-15 (2005). [Originally posted as “Testing Economic Hypotheses with State-Level Data: A Comment on Donohue and Levitt (2001)”]
(Revised in January 2008).

“Economic Prospects and Policy in Iraq,” with William Block, Keith Crane, and Simon Gray. FRB Boston Public Policy Discussion Papers Series, no. 04-1 (2004).

Books and book chapters

"Behavioral Economics: Its Prospects and Promises for Policymakers", with Lorenz Goette and Stephan Meier, in "Policymaking Insights from Behavioral Economics," based on a conference sponsored by the Boston Fed's Research Center for Behavioral Economics, 2007.

Book reviews

Review of Economic Turbulence: Is a Volatile Economy Good for America? by C. Brown, J. Haltiwanger and J. Lane, Journal of Economic Literature (June 2008).

Review of Coping with Recession: UK Company Performance in Adversity, by P.A. Geroski and P. Gregg, Journal of Economic Literature (June 2000).

Review of Dual Labor Markets: A Macroeconomic Perspective, by G. Saint-Paul, Journal of Economic Literature. (September 1998).

Video presentations

"The Great Recession" September 2010.

Public Service

Editor, Berkeley Electronic Journal of Macroeconomics

Associate Editor, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking