Ideas Made to Matter
The imbalance of PhDs’ socioeconomic backgrounds
Economics PhDs are more likely to have highly educated parents and come from a more socioeconomically advantaged background — and that’s a problem.
Jun 14, 2022
Stansbury wins dissertation award
Anna Stansbury, Assistant Professor of Work and Organization Studies, has won the 2021 Upjohn Institute Dissertation Award (First Prize). With this annual award, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research recognizes the best PhD dissertations on employment-related policies and issues, from any academic discipline, but requiring a substantial policy thrust to inform better policymaking.
Stansbury’s winning dissertation is entitled “Essays on Power in Labor Markets.” For more detail beyond her dissertation summary, these full papers are very similar to the three essays in her dissertation:
1) “Employer Concentration and Outside Options”
2) “The Declining Worker Power Hypothesis”
3) “Do US Firms Have an Incentive to Comply with the FLSA and NLRA?”
and “Under the Wage Floor: Exploring Firms’ Incentives to Comply with the Minimum Wage”
The recent award announcement regarding the winners notes the “path-breaking contributions to our understanding of some of the most salient employment issues of our time, including the bargaining power of workers…” that “…undoubtedly will influence not only future academic research but also our thinking about a range of state and federal social policies” (Susan N. Houseman, Vice President and Director of Research at the Upjohn Institute).
