AUSTIN, Texas — President Barack Obama intends to nominate University of Texas at Austin economics Professor Sandra E. Black to join the three-member White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).
Black has done extensive research on education, inter-generational mobility and early childhood development. Her studies include how racial and socioeconomic backgrounds influence college admissions, and how school starting age, birth weights and family backgrounds shape long-term education and labor-market outcomes.
“Dr. Black is an ideal choice for the CEA,” said Jason Abrevaya, chair of the Economics Department at UT Austin. “She is one of the world’s leading experts in the areas of labor economics and the economics of education, and her expertise will be invaluable in her role advising the president. Her outstanding academic research has consistently been characterized by its attention to detail, its objectivity and an overriding desire to use data carefully to answer important policy questions.”
Black is the Audre and Bernard Rapoport Centennial Chair in Economics and Public Affairs and a professor of economics at The University of Texas at Austin, positions she has held since 2010.
“I think this is a really exciting time to be joining the president’s team,” Black said. “There have been some really great achievements recently, and I am looking forward to continuing to make progress on some pressing and important economic issues.”
Black is also a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor. Between 1997 and 2001, she was an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and from 2001 to 2010 she rose from assistant to full professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles.
During her career, Black has been affiliated with the Paris School of Economics, the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Princeton University.
She served as editor of the Journal of Human Resources from 2012 to 2015 and as co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources from 2005 to 2012. She has been an associate editor of the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and Labour Economics. Black received a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a doctorate in economics from Harvard University.
