Lawrence Katz

Katz and Kevin Murphy published a landmark 1992 paper demonstrating that the widening wage gap between college-educated and non-college workers in the 1980s was driven primarily by technological change that increased demand for skilled labor faster than the supply of educated workers could grow. This 'race between education and technology' framework became the dominant explanation for rising U.S. wage inequality.

Katz served as a principal investigator on the Moving to Opportunity study, a randomized U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development experiment that offered vouchers to families in high-poverty neighborhoods to relocate to lower-poverty areas. Published findings showed that children who moved before age 13 had significantly higher adult earnings and college attendance rates.

Katz and Claudia Goldin co-authored 'The Race between Education and Technology' (2008), published by Harvard University Press, which argues that America's failure to expand educational attainment at the same pace as skill-biased technological change starting in the 1970s was the primary driver of rising income inequality.

Yes, Katz served as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor during 1993 and 1994 in the Clinton administration. He has also been a longtime research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and served for many years as editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.