Lawrence Francis Katz (born 1959) is Elisabeth Allison Professor of

Economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

and a Research Associate of the

National Bureau of Economic Research The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic c ...

Education and career

He graduated from the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

in 1981 and earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

in 1985. He served as the

chief economist Chief economist is a single-position job class having primary responsibility for the development, coordination, and production of economic and financial analysis. It is distinguished from the other economist positions by the broader scope of respons ...

at the

U.S. Department of Labor The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is one of the United States federal executive departments, executive departments of the federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government. It is responsible for the administration of fede ...

from 1993 to 1994 under

Robert Reich Robert Bernard Reich (; born June 24, 1946) is an American professor, author, lawyer, and political commentator. He worked in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and served as Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997 in ...

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

's then Secretary of Labor. Katz and his fellow Harvard colleague

Claudia Goldin Claudia Goldin (born May 14, 1946) is an American economic historian and labor economist who is currently the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University. She is a co-director of the NBER's Gender in the Economy Study Group and was th ...

, who is his "

personal Personal may refer to: Aspects of persons' respective individualities * Privacy * Personality * Personal, personal advertisement, variety of classified advertisement used to find romance or friendship Companies * Personal, Inc., a Washington, ...

as well as research partner", wrote ''The Race Between Education and Technology'' in 2008, which argued that the United States became the world's richest nation thanks to its schools. It was praised as "a monumental achievement that supplies a unified framework for interpreting how the

demand and supply In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It postulates that, holding all else equal, in a competitive market, the unit price for a particular good, or other traded item such as labor ...

of human capital have shaped the distribution of earnings in the U.S. labor market over the twentieth century", and

Alan Krueger Alan Bennett Krueger (September 17, 1960 – March 16, 2019) was an American economist who was the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

said that it "represent dthe best of what economics has to offer". Katz has been editor of the ''

Quarterly Journal of Economics ''The Quarterly Journal of Economics'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Oxford University Press for the Harvard University Department of Economics. Its current editors-in-chief are Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan ...

'' since 1991. He also serves as the Principal Investigator for the long-term evaluation of th
"Moving to Opportunity"
a

randomized In common usage, randomness is the apparent or actual lack of pattern or predictability in events. A random sequence of events, symbols or steps often has no order and does not follow an intelligible pattern or combination. Individual ra ...

housing mobility experiment. He is the co-Scientific Director of J-PAL North America, past President of the Society of Labor Economists, and has been elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences,

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

, the

Econometric Society The Econometric Society is an international society of academic economists interested in applying statistical tools to their field. It is an independent organization with no connections to societies of professional mathematicians or statisticians. ...

, and the Society of Labor Economists. Katz serves on the Panel of Economic Advisers of the

Congressional Budget Office The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency within the United States Congress, legislative branch of the United States government that provides budget and economic information to Congress. Ins ...

as well as on the Boards of the Russell Sage Foundation and the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation.

References

1959 births 20th-century American economists 21st-century American economists Chief Economists of the United States Department of Labor Economics journal editors Education economists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the Econometric Society Labor economists Living people University of California, Berkeley alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Harvard University faculty {{US-economist-stub