Economist Sandra Black and Political Scientist Keren Yarhi-Milo Will Join SIPA Faculty

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The economist Sandra Black, a highly influential and accomplished labor economist, and the political scientist Keren Yarhi-Milo, a leading scholar of decision-making in foreign policy, will join the SIPA faculty in fall 2019 as professors of international and public affairs.

Professor Black will hold a joint appointment in the Department of Economics, and Yarhi-Milo will be jointly appointed in the Department of Political Science.

“I am pleased to welcome to the SIPA faculty Sandra Black and Keren Yarhi-Milo, two scholars of distinction who will enhance SIPA’s already great strength in important subject areas,” said Dean Merit E. Janow.

“Professor Black brings not only an impressive record of empirical, policy-relevant scholarship in labor economics, but also high-level domestic policy experience,” Janow said.

“Professor Yarhi-Milo is an award-winning scholar whose research examines how leaders make foreign policy decisions—a topic with obvious value to policy makers as well as academics,” she added.

Sandra Black currently teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, where she has held an endowed chair since 2010. From 2001 to 2010 she was a faculty member at UCLA, where she rose to become a full professor and was recognized twice for distinguished teaching. She was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers for the final 18 months of President Barack Obama’s second term and has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where she worked as a staff economist early in her career.

Black’s research focuses on the role of early life experiences on the long-run outcomes of children, as well as issues of gender and discrimination. She is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a research affiliate at IZA, and a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings Institution. Black received her PhD in economics from Harvard University and her BA from the University of California, Berkeley.

Keren Yarhi-Milo is currently an associate professor with tenure in Princeton University's politics department and the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs. She has also been a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, both at Harvard University.

Yarhi-Milo’s work is infused by a strong interest in the links between theory and policy. She has written two books that explore the topic of elite decision-making in foreign policy, and multiple articles in top journals of political science. Yarhi-Milo earned her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania and her BA here at Columbia.

Photos: University of Texas at Austin; Princeton University