Caroline M. Hoxby, Stanford University

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Professor Stanford, California choxby@stanford.edu Office: (650) 725-8719

Bio/Research

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. Befor...

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Bio/Research

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.


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