Martha Louise Olney (born November 27, 1956) is a teaching 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 analy ...

(2002–present) at the

University of California, 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 u ...

. She is a winner of local and national teaching awards, and has authored several leading undergraduate economics textbooks.

Education

Olney received a B.A. at the University of Redlands and a Ph.D. in

in 1985 from the

Academic career

Martha Olney is a teaching professor of

(2002-) at the

. She was previously an

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the '' North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is ...

of economics (with tenure) at the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...

. Her early career research focused on

consumer durables In economics, a durable good or a hard good or consumer durable is a good that does not quickly wear out or, more specifically, one that yields utility over time rather than being completely consumed in one use. Items like bricks could be consid ...

, the advent of

consumer credit Credit (from Latin verb ''credit'', meaning "one believes") is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt ...

in the 1920s, and the Great Depression. She has been awarded the Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award, which is given to only three professors per year, and the Jonathan Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching Economic History, by the Economic History Association (in 1997).

Textbook authorship

* "Essentials of Economics" with

Paul Krugman Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was t ...

and Robin Wells * "Macroeconomics" with J. Bradford DeLong * "Microeconomics as a Second Language" * "Macroeconomics as a Second Language"

Selected Research publications

* Olney, Martha L. Buy now, pay later: advertising, credit, and consumer durables in the 1920s. University of North Carolina Press, 1991. * Olney, Martha L. "Avoiding default: The role of credit in the consumption collapse of 1930." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 114, no. 1 (1999): 319-335. * Olney, Martha L. "When your word is not enough: race, collateral, and household credit." The Journal of Economic History 58, no. 2 (1998): 408-431. * Olney, Martha L. "Credit as a production-smoothing device: the case of automobiles, 1913–1938." The Journal of Economic History 49, no. 2 (1989): 377-391.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Olney, Martha University of California, Berkeley faculty University of California, Berkeley alumni 21st-century American economists American women economists 1956 births Living people LGBT academics 21st-century American women