Departmental Seminar with Nathaniel Hedren (MIT)

Nathaniel Hendren is Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is a Founder and Co-Director of Policy Impacts and a Founder and Co-Director of Opportunity Insights. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Among his editorial duties, he is the Lead Editor of the Journal of Public Economics and an Associate Editor of American Economic Review: Insights.

His work seeks to understand how we can expand economic opportunity. His work quantifies lack of economic mobility and economic opportunity for those of different backgrounds. His work also aims to uncover why private markets fail to provide economic opportunity in settings ranging from insurance markets to investments in children's education. And, his work aims to provide new tools to evaluate the effectiveness of government policies aimed at expanding opportunity and improving societal well-being.

He has been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2019 and a Sloan Fellowship in 2016. In 2024 he was elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Nathaniel Hendren's website

He will give a talk based on several of his papers at the next Departmental Seminar on the topic:

Welfare Analysis of Government Policy Changes (read summary with links to papers, PDF 42 KB)

The next Departmental Seminar will host Angelique ACQUATELLA (TSE) on April 20th.