Robert A. Moffitt, Ph.D.
Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Economic
Johns Hopkins University
Having received his Bachelor’s in Economics from Rice University in 1970, Dr. Moffitt went on to Brown University where he completed the Economic trifecta earning a Master’s in 1972 and a Doctorate in 1975.
Dr. Moffitt is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins University, where he has worked since 1995. He also holds a joint appointment at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Prior to assuming his positions at Hopkins, he was Professor of Economics at Brown University, where he taught for eleven years. Hehas also been a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Maryland, and worked for several years at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.
Moffitt’s research interests are in the areas of labor economics and applied microeconometrics, with a special focus on the economics of issues relating to the low-income population in the U.S. A large portion of his research in labor economics has concerned the labor supply decisions of female heads of family and its response to the U.S. welfare system. His research on the welfare system has led to publications on the AFDC, Food Stamp, and Medicaid programs. He has also published research on the labor supply and family structure effects of social insurance programs, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance, as well as of the U.S. income tax system. Other papers have concerned trends in volatility in the U.S. labor market and trends in the labor force attachment of men and women. Part of his research also focuses on population economics and economic demography, where he has estimated economic models of marriage, cohabitation, female headship, and fertility. Moffitt’s methodological research has led to publications on selection bias and limited-dependent variable models, nonlinear budget constraints, panel data, attrition, duration models, and causal modeling and program evaluation.
This Past President of PAA is also a fellow of both the Econometric Society and of the Society of Labor Economists. He is also a National Associate of the National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as Chief Editor of the American Economic Review, Coeditor of the Review of Economics and Statistics, Chief Editor of the Journal of Human Resources, and as Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Panel to Evaluate Welfare Reform. He is currently editor of Tax Policy and the Economy, a publication of the National Bureau of Economic Research which provides policy analysts with Washington with results from recent academic economic research on tax and transfer issues.