Economics

The Mattersdorff-Steinhardt lecture is given every year by a distinguished scholar chosen by the economics department faculty.

Guest Lecturer for 2017:

David Neumark is Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at the University of California,
Irvine, where he directs the Economic Self-Sufficiency Policy Research Institute (ESSPRI).
He does research in numerous areas of labor economics that intersect with important
public policy issues, most significantly with respect to anti-poverty policy, discrimination,
and local economic development incentives. Professor Neumark was one of the original
contributors to the “new minimum wage research,” helping to pioneer the use of state level
minimum wage variation to estimate minimum wage effects. His subsequent work
moved well beyond the debate over employment effects, to study the effects of minimum
wages on the income distribution, long-run effects of minimum wages on human capital
and earnings, and complementarities between minimum wages and the Earned Income
Tax Credit. In related work, he was the first to assemble data and explore methods to
study the effects of city living wage laws, as well as contributing to understanding the
political economy of these laws. His current work on anti-poverty policies focuses on
comparisons between the minimum wage and alternative policies, with a particular
emphasis on the long-term effects of these policies in encouraging economic self-sufficiency.

Professor Neumark received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1987. He has held prior
positions at the Public Policy Institute of California, Michigan State University, the
University of Pennsylvania, and the Federal Reserve Board. He is currently also a Visiting
Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He has written or edited five
books, include his award-winning book Minimum Wages, published by the MIT Press in
2008, and he has published over 175 papers. He has also written many op-eds, which
have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle,
and San Diego Union-Tribune, and has appeared frequently on National Public Radio and
other national and local news outlets.

 

Date: March 3, 2017
Time: 6:00-7:30pm
Location: Council Chamber

Recent Mattersdorff-Steinhardt Lecturers

2016   Dr. Gregory Clark
2013   Dr. Randall Wray
2012   Dean Baker
2010   William Black
2009   Linda Bilmes
2008   Giovanni Peri
2007   Kenneth Pomeranz
2006   Samuel Bowles
2005   Ilene Grabel
2004   Nancy Folbre
2003   Trudy Cameron
2002   Richard Lipsey
2001   James K. Galbraith