Claudia Goldin

Claudia Goldin is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University and director of the NBER’s Development of the American Economy program. Goldin’s research is in the general area of American economic history and has covered topics that include slavery, emancipation, the post-bellum South, the family, women in the economy, the economic impact of war, immigration, New Deal policies, inequality, technological change, and education. Most of her research interprets the “present through the lens of the past” and explores the origins of current issues of concern. Many of her recent papers concern the rise of mass education in the United States and its impact on economic growth and wage inequality. They form the core of her recently published, award-winning book, The Race between Education and Technology (with L. Katz; The Belknap Press, 2008).

She is the author and editor of several books, among them Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (Oxford 1990), The Regulated Economy: A Historical Approach to Political Economy (with G. Libecap; University of Chicago Press 1994), The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century (with M. Bordo and E. White; University of Chicago Press 1998), and Corruption and Reform: Lesson’s from America’s Economic History (with E. Glaeser; Chicago 2006).

Goldin has also continued her work on various gender issues, such as the impact of “the pill” on women’s career and marriage decisions, women’s surnames after marriage as a social indicator, and the reasons why women are now the majority of undergraduates. Goldin has also explored the past century of the career and family tradeoff among college graduate women in the United States. She has recently embarked on a wide ranging project on the family and career “transitions” of male and female graduates of selective universities from the late 1960s to the present.

Goldin is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences (Sections 53 and 54), a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society of Labor Economists, and the Econometric Society. Goldin completed her term as the president of the Economic History Association in 2000 and was vice president of that association in 1989. In 1991, Goldin was a vice president of the American Economic Association. From 1984 to 1988, she was editor of the Journal of Economic History, and she is currently an associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics and a member of various editorial boards. She holds an honorary doctor of humane letters from the University of Nebraska. Her research has been funded by the NSF and the Spencer Foundation, and she was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1987/88. She has won several awards for her teaching of undergraduate and graduate students. Goldin received her B.A. from Cornell University and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Contact information: Claudia Goldin, Department of Economics