Harvard Labor Economist Presents on Private College Admissions and Leadership Diversity Oct. 4

ATLANTA — Labor economist David Deming, the Academic Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and the Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy, will speak on private college admissions policies and leadership diversity at the 18^th annual W.J. Usery Distinguished Lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 4.

His presentation will be held at Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, 55 Park Place NE, Atlanta, on the ninth floor, in Conference Room 903/904. It begins at 10:30 a.m.

Deming is noted for his work on education, economic inequality and the future of the labor market. He will speak on the topic, “Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges,” a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper he recently co-authored with Harvard economists Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman.

Deming is a principal investigator along with Chetty and Friedman at the CLIMB Initiative, an organization that seeks to study and improve the role of higher education in social mobility. He is also a faculty lead of the Project on Workforce, a cross-Harvard initiative that focuses on building better pathways to economic mobility through the school-to-work transition. He recently co-founded the Skills Lab, which creates performance-based measures of “soft” skills such as teamwork and decision-making.

He has been awarded the Sherwin Rosen Prize (2022) for outstanding contributions to labor economics and the David N. Kershaw Prize (2018) for distinguished contributions to the field of public policy and management by a person under the age of 40. He served as a co-editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics from 2018 to 2021. He has also written columns for The New York Times Economic View.

“Dave is an outstanding labor economist who has made important contributions to our understanding of the return to ‘soft skills’ in the labor markets and the role of education in shaping later life outcomes,” said Tim Sass, the W.J. Usery Chair of the American Workplace. “His work sheds light on a variety of policy-relevant issues, including the importance of early learning programs, the relationship between education and crime, the value of degrees from for-profit colleges and online programs, and the rewards for social and cognitive skills in the workplace. I am thrilled that Dave accepted our invitation to be this year’s Usery Distinguished Lecturer.”

The annual W.J. Usery Distinguished Lecture Series at the Andrew Young School features leading economists addressing important issues in the American workplace. The series, launched in 2005, honors the late W.J. “Bill” Usery Jr., formerly a U.S. Secretary of Labor and Distinguished Executive Fellow in Labor Policy at AYSPS. During his years of service in government and the private sector, Usery made an indelible contribution to the well-being of workers and the American workplace.

The lecture will be streamed online HERE.