About Damon Jones

Damon Jones is an associate professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. He conducts research at the intersection of three fields within economics.

First, there is public finance, the field of economics that analyzes government taxation and spending, using models of choice to predict the effects of policy and economic notions of well-being to measure the policy’s benefit or harm to consumers.

Second is household finance, the branch of economics that focuses on the financial decisions, saving, borrowing and insurance, at the household level.

Finally, there is behavioral economics, the branch of economics that uses insights from psychology and empirical evidence to explore the ways in which human behavior deviates from the neoclassical model of consumer decision-making.

Damon's current research topics include income tax policy, social security, retirement and retirement savings, and the interaction between employer-provided benefits and labor market outcomes.

At Harris, Jones currently teaches a course on public finance and public policy, a course in advanced microeconomics, and the practicum "Taxes, Transfers, and Nonprofits." He was a post doctoral fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (2009–2010) and is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Jones received his PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and also holds a BA in Public Policy with a minor in African and African-American Studies from Stanford University, which he received in 2003.