Home | Bio and Curriculum Vitae | Research | Awards | Teaching | Videos | Other Media
Coverage | Profiles |
Photographs | Seminars | Links | Contact | |
Caroline Hoxby is the Scott and Donya Bommer Professor of Economics
at Stanford University, the Director of the Economics of Education Program at
the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover
Institution and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Before moving to Stanford in 2007, she was
the Fried Professor of Economics and a Harvard College Professor at Harvard
University (1994-2007). Trained as a
public finance and labor economist, Hoxby is one of
the world's leading scholars in the Economics of Education. Her pioneering work in the field was
transformative because she saw that applying economic thinking to education
generates many important insights. Her
work often draws upon models of investment, incentives, market design, finance,
optimal pricing, social insurance, and behavioral economics. In addition, Hoxby
is an ardent promoter of the use of scientific methods (when feasible) in
education research. Under her
mentorship at the NBER, work in the Economics of Education has expanded
enormously and now features some of the most advanced research in economics,
conducted by a young vibrant group of scholars. Hoxby is a Principal
Investigator of the Expanding College
Opportunities project, a randomized controlled trial that had dramatic
effects on low-income, high achievers' college-going. For work related to this project, she
recently received The Smithsonian Institution's Ingenuity Award. Her research in this area began with a
demonstration that low-income high achievers usually fail to apply to any
selective college. This is despite the
fact that they are extremely likely to be admitted and receive such generous
financial aid that they usually pay much less to attend selective colleges
than they do to attend non-selective schools.
This issue is now being addressed systematically owing to the
project's evidence that individualized but inexpensive informational
interventions cause students to take fuller advantage of their
opportunities. In some of her other
best known work on higher education, she explains the rising cost of
college. She analyzes how the market
for higher education works and has developed since WWII. She evaluates why some universities are
much more productive than others.
Recently, she has analyzed universities' endowment policies and the
economics of online higher education.
Her current research includes studies of colleges' value-added and how
federal spending and tax policies affect college-going. Hoxby best known work on
elementary and secondary education includes numerous studies of the effects
of school choice and competition on student achievement, rewards for
teaching, and the productivity of schools.
Her study of New York City's charter schools is the largest randomized
evaluation of how charter schools affect achievement. The methods she pioneered for studying the
causal effect that students have on their peers have been widely followed by
other researchers. Hoxby
also writes on public school finance equalization, class size, teacher
incentives, and teacher unionization.
Her ongoing research includes studies of Teach for America and how
education affects economic growth. Hoxby's work in public
finance includes a recent study that indicates that the high salience of
property taxes may explain why only they, among all taxes, have been falling
as a share of GDP over time. Hoxby has been a
presidential appointee to the National Board of Education Sciences and serves
on advisory committees for the government, The Brookings Institution, and
organizations with an interest in education policy. Her honors include The Smithsonian
Institution's Ingenuity Award, The Thomas B. Fordham Prize for Distinguished
Scholarship in Education, Global Leader of Tomorrow from the World Economic
Forum, Carnegie Scholar, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a John M.
Olin Fellowship, and a National Tax Association Award. Hoxby is a renowned
teacher and advisor and has received multiple honors recognizing these
contributions. These include the John
and Lydia Pearce Mitchell University Fellowship, Stanford Economics Teacher
of the Year, and a Phi Beta Kappa
prize. She is proud of her many former
students who are now eminent economists and policy makers. Hoxby was one of
the architects of Stanford's Education as Self-Fashioning program. This set of courses is designed to draw students
into broad and deep undergraduate education through biography, history,
social science, science, philosophy and literature that explicitly reflect on
the value of education. Hoxby has a Ph.D. from
MIT, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and obtained her baccalaureate
degree summa cum laude from Harvard
University. She is married to
Blair Hoxby, also a Rhodes Scholar. He is a tenured professor in Stanford's
Department of English. For a full Curriculum Vitae, please go here. |
|