Betsey Stevenson

Betsey Stevenson is Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Lyft, Inc.; a Faculty Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research; a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London and the CESifo Research Network in Munich; an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance; and a member of the Sloan Foundation Advisory Board. Since 2024 she has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of New South Wales.

She previously served as a member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2015, advising the president on social policy, labor market, and trade issues. Earlier she served as Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor from 2010 to 2011. She was a member of the Biden-Harris Treasury transition team in 2020–21 and a Convener at the Obama Foundation in 2022–23.

Stevenson is a labor economist who has published widely in leading economics journals on the labor market, the economics of the family, and subjective well-being. Her research explores women’s labor market experiences, the economic forces shaping the modern family, and how these experiences and forces influence each other. Her more recent work examines AI and the future of work, caregiving and paid leave, and the recovery from the pandemic-era labor market.

She is the co-author, with Justin Wolfers, of the textbook Principles of Economics (Worth Publishers, 1st ed. 2020, 3rd ed. 2025), together with its micro and macro split editions and Australian and Canadian adaptations. Stevenson and Wolfers co-host Think Like An Economist, an audio course teaching the core ideas of micro- and macroeconomics (53 episodes, produced by Himalaya Media). Stevenson also hosted Planet Money’s 2020 Summer School.

Stevenson is a past columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and a recurring commentator for NPR’s Marketplace, CBS’s Face the Nation, and Bloomberg Television. She has testified before the U.S. Senate, the House Ways and Means Committee, the Joint Economic Committee, the EEOC, and the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole Symposium.

She received the University of Michigan’s Presidential Award for Public Engagement in 2023 and the John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award from the Labor and Employment Relations Association in 2010 for outstanding contributions to labor economics.

Stevenson holds a BA in Economics and Mathematics from Wellesley College and MA and PhD degrees in Economics from Harvard University, where her advisors were Lawrence Katz, Claudia Goldin, and Caroline Hoxby. Before Michigan she was on the faculty of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.