Los Angeles Harper Lecture: Urban Labs: Science in Service of Cities

Cities fuel remarkable economic and cultural opportunity, but they can also amplify dire social problems such as unemployment, financial instability, and homelessness. Empowering residents of cities to seize opportunities is a top priority for many policy makers, and yet there is too little evidence about what works, what is sustainable, and how to leverage scarce resources. In this lecture, Marianne Bertrand will discuss her work as faculty director of the Poverty Lab at the University of Chicago Urban Labs, highlighting the innovative ways that her team partners with policy makers to address these challenges. She will also describe a Poverty Lab partnership in Chicago focused on improving graduation rates among low-income community college students, many of whom struggle to balance the demands of college life with pressing financial and familial obligations, as well as a partnership in Los Angeles that applies the power of big data algorithms to one of the most pressing challenges facing Southern California: homelessness.

To register or find out more information, please click here. 

Featured Faculty

Marianne Bertrand is the Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She is an applied microeconomist whose research covers the fields of labor economics, corporate finance, and development economics. Her research in these areas has been published widely. She has received numerous awards and honors, including the 2004 American Economic Association’s Elaine Bennett Research Prize and the 2012 Sherwin Rosen Prize for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Labor Economics from the Society of Labor Economists. Bertrand received her bachelor’s in economics and master’s in econometrics from Belgium’s Université libre de Bruxelles, followed by a PhD in economics from Harvard.

To learn more about the entire Harper Lecture Series, please visit the UChicago Alumni Association's page.

Questions? Contact alumniassociation@uchicago.edu or 773.702.2150.