Faculty
Deborah Lucas is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Director of the MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy.
Lucas's current research lies at the intersection of finance and policy, with a focus on economically meaningful cost measurement and assessment of government financial activities. Some current projects include measuring the capital subsidies to state-owned enterprises, evaluating the international fiscal and macroeconomic implications of Covid19 credit support programs, creating a world atlas of government financial institutions, and analyzing reverse mortgages.
Lucas is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Term Professor at the PBC School of Finance at Tsinghua University, and a member of the Shadow Open Market Committee. She serves on advisory boards for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Urban Institute, on the editorial board of the Annual Review of Financial Economics, and as an associate editor for the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. She is a board member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and consultant for the OECD and the Congressional Budget Office. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Public Administration and the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Previous appointments include chief economist, and subsequently assistant and associate director at the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, member of the Social Security Technical Advisory Panel, senior staff economist for U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, Professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and coeditor of the JMCB. An expert on federal credit programs, she has testified before the U.S. Congress on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, student loans, and strategically important financial institutions.
Lucas received her BA, MA, and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.
Lucas, Deborah J., and Jorge Jimenez Montesinos. In Economics of Infrastructure Investment, 1-33. Cambridge, MA: University of Chicago Press. Forthcoming.
Lucas, Deborah J. In Gathering Storm: The Risks of State Pension Underfunding, Cambridge, UK:. Forthcoming.
Lucas, Deborah J. In Gathering Storm: The Risks of State Pension Underfunding, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Forthcoming.
Golding, Edward, and Deborah J. Lucas, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6380-20. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, October 2022.
Lucas, Deborah J. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (2021): 49-63.
Lucas, Deborah J. In Impact of COVID-19 on Asian Economies and Policy Responses, edited by Bernard Yeung, Sumit Agarwal, and Zhiguo He, 65-69. London, UK: World Scientific Press, 2021.
Cryptocurrencies can increase financial inclusion, but only when properly regulated. Which U.S. regulator should be responsible for what, and how much oversight is needed?
As a former chief risk officer, C.S. “Venkat” keeps an eye out for the unexpected. Here are the three business risks that concern him the most.
Economists view a carbon tax as an effective solution to lower emissions, yet the United States has not implemented one. Has the time come?
Deborah Lucas said she would opt for temporarily leaving the weekly payment at $600, or even increasing it a bit...
The central bank could try to help Americans more directly, said Prof. Lucas: “They could print money, and ... distribute it to households."
Deborah Lucas says: "If the goal is to protect paychecks, the way we do that is through our unemployment system,”
