Ebonya Washington

The economist Ebonya Washington joined the Columbia faculty in July 2022 as the Laurans A. and Arlene Mendelson Professor of Economics and a professor of international and public affairs.

Professor Washington specializes in public finance and political economy; her research interests include the interplay of race, gender, and political representation. Her research has appeared in numerous publications including the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. She is cochair of the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession (CSMGEP) and co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Political Economy Program.

Washington comes to Morningside Heights after almost two decades at Yale, where she rose to become a full professor in 2013 after first joining the faculty as an assistant professor in 2004. She earned her PhD in economics at MIT in 2003.