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 developing and applying improved models to measure credit subsidies to state-owned enterprises, evaluating the international fiscal and macroeconomic implications of COVID-19 credit support and forbearance programs, creating a world atlas of government financial institutions, and analyzing the costs and welfare consequences of government financial products such as 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 an advisory board at the Urban Institute and at the Peterson Institute, and is on the editorial board of the Annual Review of Financial Economics. She is a board member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and P/E Investments, and a consultant for 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.
Gee Hee Hong and Deborah J. Lucas. In Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring Conference, Washington, D.C.: March 2023.
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, 2022.
The biennial prize recognizes an individual who had made outstanding contributions to the advancement of financial policy research or practice, which is the core mission of the MIT GCFP.
Four MIT Sloan economists on lessons learned and next steps after the demise of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic.
Senior lecturer Bob Pozen presented [Mario] Draghi with the Miriam Pozen Prize.
"The lack of reliable official statistics is a reason that economists haven't tried to quantify the effects of credit policies."
"Inflation will unwind even if the Fed is not raising rates a lot. There is still ... savings being spent down. The Fed needs to be patient."
Economists view a carbon tax as an effective solution to lower emissions, yet the United States has not implemented one. Has the time come?
