Seminars and Research

McGee Public Policy Lecture Series

Thursday, March 24th, 2011, 4p.m.
Cohen Hall, room 203, Peabody Campus

Janet Currie, Sami Mnaymneh Professor of Economics, Columbia University

"Inequality at Birth: Some Causes and Consequences"

    

Janet Currie is the Sami Mnaymneh Professor of Economics at Columbia University and Director of the Program on Families and Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research.  She was Chair of the Department of Economics at Columbia from 2006 to 2009.  Currie has held previous faculty positions at MIT and UCLA.  She received her Ph.D. in 1988 from Princeton University.

Currie was Vice President of the American Economic Association in 2010.  She is a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists, a Senior Research Affiliate of the University of Michigan 's National Poverty Center, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.  Currie is currently Editor of the Journal of Economic Literature and a member of the Editorial Board of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Currie has served on a number of committees and advisory panels for various agencies and professional societies.  To name but a few, she has been on several National Academy of Sciences panels, including the Committee on Population, the Advisory Board of the National Children's Study, and the Review Panel for Economics of the National Science Foundation.  In addition, Currie has served as a consultant for the National Health Interview Survey and the National Longitudinal Surveys.

Currie’s research focuses on the health and well-being of children. She has written about early intervention programs, programs to expand health insurance and improve health care, public housing, and food and nutrition programs. Currie has published two books, Welfare and Well-Being of Children (1995) and The Invisible Safety Net: Protecting the Nation’s Poor Children and Families (2006), as well as over 90 journal articles and book chapters.  Her current research focuses on socioeconomic differences in child health and on environmental threats to children's health from sources such as toxic pollutants and fast food.

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MCGEE LECTURE ARCHIVES

Thursday, February 19, 2009
"The Financial Crisis and the Recession: What is Happening and What Should the Government Do About It"
Robert E. Hall, Robert and Carole McNeil Hoover Senior Fellow and Professor of Economics, Stanford University

Monday, December 1, 2008
"The Case for Inheritance Taxation"
Robin Boadway, David Chadwick Smith Chair in Economics at Queen's University
[video]

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
"Income, aging, health and wellbeing: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll"
Angus Deaton, Princeton University

Monday, December 3rd, 2007
"Holdup, Assest Ownership, and Reference Points"
Oliver Hart, Harvard University

Wednesday, January 31, 2007
"Lawlessness and Economics: Alternative Institutions of Economic Governance"
Avinash Dixit, Princeton University

Thursday, November 3, 2005
"Monetary Policy in Brazil"
Marcelo Kfoury Muinhos, Central Bank of Brazil

Thursday, September 16, 2004
Topic: Politics and trade agreements
Mickey Kantor, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce

Wednesday, January 21, 2004
"Healthy, Wealthy and Wise? The Causal Pathways between Health and Socioeconomic Status"
Daniel McFadden, University of California, Berkeley, Nobel Laureate 2000

Thursday, March 27, 2003
"Social Security Reform"
Peter Diamond, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nobel Laureate 2010

Wednesday April 17, 2002
"Life Earnings and Economic Development"
Robert E. Lucas, Jr, University of Chicago, Nobel Laureate 1995