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IZA NewsJanuary 16, 2020

The 2020 IZA Prize in Labor Economics goes to Lawrence Katz

Award recognizes outstanding contributions to the analysis of earnings inequality and educational change

© IZA

Lawrence F. Katz (Harvard University) will receive the 2020 IZA Prize in Labor Economics for his 35 years of research documenting changes in earnings inequality and showing the role of the expansion of educational opportunity in increasing living standards. Worth 50,000 euros, the IZA Prize is regarded as the most prestigious science award in the field. It will be formally conferred during the EALE/SOLE/AASLE World Conference in Berlin on June 27, 2020.

According to the award statement, “Lawrence Katz is universally recognized in the world of economics as a remarkably imaginative and productive scholar, who combines profound economic research with an interest in current basic and specific issues of public policy. Most important, the same recognition is given to his decency in dealing with other economists, especially junior researchers.”

[download the full statement – PDF]

The IZA Prize Committee consists of seven distinguished economists, five of whom are previous Awardees. “I am absolutely delighted that we are conferring this Prize on Larry Katz. Like others worldwide, my understanding of changes in inequality in rich countries and what has been causing them has been greatly enhanced by his vast oeuvre of research on these subjects,” said IZA Network Director Daniel Hamermesh, who chairs the committee.

[read more about the IZA Prize and previous winners]

Lawrence F. Katz

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Lawrence F. Katz is the Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on issues in labor economics and the economics of social problems. He is the author (with Claudia Goldin) of The Race between Education and Technology (Harvard University Press, 2008), a history of U.S. economic inequality and the roles of technological change and the pace of educational advance in affecting the wage structure.

Katz also has been studying the impacts of neighborhood poverty on low-income families as the principal investigator of the long-term evaluation of the Moving to Opportunity program, a randomized housing mobility experiment. His past research has explored a wide range of topics including U.S. and comparative wage inequality trends, educational wage differentials and the labor market returns to education, the impact of globalization and technological change on the labor market, the economics of immigration, unemployment and unemployment insurance, regional labor markets, the evaluation of labor market programs, the problems of low-income neighborhoods, and the social and economic consequences of the birth control pill.

Professor Katz has been editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics since 1991 and served as the Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor for 1993 and 1994. 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 Econometric Society, and the Society of Labor Economists. Katz serves on the Boards of the Russell Sage Foundation and MDRC. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1981 and earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985.

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Lawrence F. Katz

Image

Lawrence F. Katz is the Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on issues in labor economics and the economics of social problems. He is the author (with Claudia Goldin) of The Race between Education and Technology (Harvard University Press, 2008), a history of U.S. economic inequality and the roles of technological change and the pace of educational advance in affecting the wage structure.

Katz also has been studying the impacts of neighborhood poverty on low-income families as the principal investigator of the long-term evaluation of the Moving to Opportunity program, a randomized housing mobility experiment. His past research has explored a wide range of topics including U.S. and comparative wage inequality trends, educational wage differentials and the labor market returns to education, the impact of globalization and technological change on the labor market, the economics of immigration, unemployment and unemployment insurance, regional labor markets, the evaluation of labor market programs, the problems of low-income neighborhoods, and the social and economic consequences of the birth control pill.

Professor Katz has been editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics since 1991 and served as the Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor for 1993 and 1994. 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 Econometric Society, and the Society of Labor Economists. Katz serves on the Boards of the Russell Sage Foundation and MDRC. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1981 and earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985.

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