Welcome to the Department of Economics at Tulane University. The main areas in which faculty members conduct research and teach courses are development economics (focusing on inequality and poverty), the economics of education, health economics, and public economics, as well as in economic history, international economics, and core areas of econometrics and economic theory. The Department has 19 regular faculty members, 4 postdoctoral teaching fellows, 2 visiting or adjunct professors, over 300 undergraduate majors, almost 40 graduate students, and 4 affiliated research centers.

"The Tulane Department of Economics is a special place. Our world-renowned faculty not only publishes in the profession's top journals, but has a real impact in solving real-world economic problems. The relevance and excitement of that work carries over to the classroom where we have some of the best instructors you will ever see." – Douglas N. Harris, Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics

Tulane Economics in the News

Kevin Callison, Economics, Tulane University
Kevin Callison, assistant professor of health policy and management and affiliated faculty in the Department of Economics, recently published a study on the effect of paid sick leave on cancer screenings in the New England Journal of Medicine. Callison and coauthors found that screening mammography and colorectal cancer screenings rose in areas where employers were required to offer paid sick leave coverage to their employees.
Patrick Testa Assistant Professor Department of Economics Tulane University
Economics professor Patrick Testa will have his paper, "The Other Great Migration: Southern Whites and the New Right," published in an upcoming issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Part of a set of papers on migration and cultural change, Testa and coauthors link mass migration out of the South in the 20th century to major shifts in national policy coalitions.
Nora Lustig and Doug Harris from the Department of Economics with Provost Robin Forman
Economics professors Nora Lustig and Douglas Harris were among Tulane Research Award recipients honoring research, scholarship, and artistic achievement.
Nora Lustig Professor Tulane University Department of Economics
The General Assembly of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality (ECINEQ) appointed our own Nora Lustig as president of the organization. Prof. Lustig is the first woman to be elected president. Her term is for the period 2023-2025.
Patrick Button Assistant Professor Department of Economics Tulane University
Patrick Button received the prestigious CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation for $400,000. This five-year career development grant funds comprehensive research and educational program on discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, African Americans, and Hispanics, and studying access to mental health care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gary Hoover, Economics, Tulane University
Gary “Hoov” Hoover, the director of Tulane University’s Murphy Institute and a leading economist on issues of economic policy and its impact on inequality, was among a group of 40 Nobel Prize laureates and global innovators selected for the inaugural Nobel Prize Summit, April 26-28, 2021. Watch the video on YouTube.