Visiting Scholars, 2008–2009

About the Scholars

Rodney J. Andrews  |  Koen Caminada |  Angel L. Harris  |  Julia B. Isaacs  |  Fernando Antonio Lozano  |  
John Micklewright  |  Udaya Waglé

Rodney J. Andrews

Rodney J. Andrews, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy, Postdoctoral Fellow, Research Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, will be in residence at IRP October 5 through October 11, 2008.

On October 9, Andrews will present a seminar at IRP titled “Application Behavior, Rank, and Targeted Recruitment: An Examination of Alternatives to Traditional Affirmative Action Policies.”

Rodney J. Andrews earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 2007. His dissertation evaluated the impact of legal challenges to affirmative action and the resulting policy responses to minority educational outcomes. He is currently examining the impact of early-onset psychiatric disorders on various labor market outcomes of African-Americans and Caribbean-Americans. The research is intended to shed light on yet another aspect of health disparities.

A recent publication is “Bergstrom et al.: A Correction,” Journal of Public Economics 90(4–5, 2006): 957–958.

Andrews’s hosts and mentors during his stay will be Timothy Smeeding, IRP Director and Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs; and Barbara Wolfe, Professor of Economics, Population Health Sciences, and Public Affairs, IRP Affiliate and Former Director, and 2008 Guggenheim Fellow.

Koen Caminada

Koen Caminada, Professor of Empirical Analysis of Tax and Social Policy, Leiden University, will be visiting IRP from April 1 through June 15, 2009. While at the UW, Caminada will be researching and interacting with colleagues about a research project on poverty reduction in a cross-country comparative setting, focusing especially on social income transfers and income-poverty alleviation in the European Union and the United States.

Two recent publications are K. Caminada, K. P. Goudswaard and O. P. van Vliet (2009), “Patterns of Welfare State Indicators in the EU: Is there Convergence?” Journal of Common Market Studies, forthcoming; and K. Caminada and K. Goudswaard (2008), "Revenue Effects of Tax Facilities for Pension Savings," Atlantic Economic Journal 36(2): 233-246.

Angel L. Harris

Angel L. Harris, Assistant Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, Princeton University, and Faculty Associate, Office of Population Research, Joint Ph.D. Program in Social Policy, also at Princeton, will be in residence at IRP May 3 through May 10, 2009.

On May 7, Harris will present a seminar at IRP (title to be announced).

Angel L. Harris earned a Ph.D. in public policy and sociology in 2005 from the University of Michigan; his dissertation was awarded the Horace H. Rackham Distinguished Dissertation Award for 2005. His research interests are in understanding the causes of social inequality in the U.S. Since education is the primary formal mechanism for upward socioeconomic mobility within the U.S., he is focused on racial and gender disparities in academic outcomes among adolescents.

A forthcoming publication is “Academic Outcomes among Latino/a and Asian Americans: An Assessment of the Immigration Effect,” (with Monica Trujillo and Kenneth Jamison), Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Harris’s host and mentor during his stay will be Adam Gamoran, Professor of Sociology and Educational Policy Studies; Director, Wisconsin Center for Education Research; and IRP Affiliate.

Julia B. Isaacs

Julia B. Isaacs, Child and Family Policy Fellow, Economic Studies, Brookings Institution, is spending half of her time at IRP in 2008–2009. Isaacs focuses on public investments in children and how children are affected by national budgetary policies. A former federal budget analyst, she also researches the economic mobility of children and families across the income spectrum.

Recent work by Isaacs includes Cost-Effective Investments in Children; Economic Mobility in America (co-authored with Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins); Impacts of Early Childhood Programs; and most recently, “Supporting Young Children and Families: An Investment Strategy that Pays, ” a paper that appears in the First Focus bipartisan advocacy organization’s Big Ideas for Children. Isaacs’s most recent paper recommends ways in which the federal government should invest in young children before they start kindergarten.

Fernando Antonio Lozano

Fernando Antonio Lozano, Assistant Professor of Economics, Pomona College; and National Poverty Center Postdoctoral Fellow, Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, 2008–2009, will be in residence at IRP November 30 through December 13, 2008.

On December 4, Lozano will present a seminar at IRP titled “The Evolution of Workers’ Schedule Flexibility in the U.S. Labor Force: Evidence from the Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotations Groups.”

Fernando Antonio Lozano earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2005. His research explores the determinants of labor market success in the United States, with emphasis on first- and second-generation immigrants. For example, in his current research he explores the determinants of the length of the work week of male immigrants from Mexico; in a second article he explores the labor market return to obtaining a green card, as a part of a massive amnesty program, to live in the United States; and in a third paper he explores whether more stringent border patrol policing affects the selection of immigrant women from Mexico, and in turn their labor market outcomes.

A recent publication is “The Expanding Workweek? Understanding Trends in Long Work Hours among U.S. Men, 1979–2005,” (with Peter Kuhn), Journal of Labor Economics 26(2, April 2008): 311–344.

Lozano’s hosts and mentors during his stay will be Timothy Smeeding, IRP Director and Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs; Christopher Taber, Professor of Economics and IRP Affiliate; and Glen Cain, Professor Emeritus of Economics and IRP Affiliate.

John Micklewright

John Micklewright, Professor of Social Statistics and Policy Analysis, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, United Kingdom, is visiting IRP and the Center for World Affairs and the Economy at the La Follette School of Public Affairs in April 2009. Micklewright’s research interests cover: (a) poverty, inequality, and the measurement of living standards; (b) labor market flows and behavior; (c) educational achievement; and (d) charitable giving.

Recent publications include papers in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society and Oxford Review of Education. Earlier work has appeared in, e.g., Journal of Economic Literature,the Economic Journal, and the Handbook of Income Distribution (North-Holland). He has books with Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Macmillan. A recent paper, “Job Search Monitoring and Unemployment Duration: Evidence from a Randomised Control Trial,” Center for Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper No. 6711, London, U.K., with Gyula Nagy, explores the disincentive effects of unemployment benefit systems.

Udaya Waglé

Udaya Waglé, Assistant Professor, School of Public Affairs and Administration, Western Michigan University; Local Research Affiliate, National Poverty Center, Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, will be in residence at IRP October 19 through October 24, 2008.

On October 23, Waglé will present a seminar at IRP titled “Working Poverty in Michigan: Changes in the Magnitudes and Demographic and Labor Determinants of Poverty, 1998 and 2007.”

Waglé earned a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2004. He has a strong research background and publication record focusing on economic inequality, poverty, and other issues experienced by socioeconomically marginalized groups. He is currently examining changes and determinants of working poverty in the financially struggling state of Michigan during the 1990s and 2000s using CPS data. His other projects examine the impact of the Food Stamps Program in increasing economic security in the U.S. and the role of population heterogeneity and social policies in determining poverty outcomes in high-income OECD countries.

His most recent publications include Multidimensional Poverty Measurement: Concepts and Applications (2008, Springer).

Waglé’s hosts and mentors during his stay will be Timothy Smeeding, IRP Director and Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs; and Robert H. Haveman, John Bascom Professor Emeritus of Economics and Public Affairs.