Ladd's Autobiographical Essay Published in 'Eminent Economists'

Helen "Sunny" Ladd, the Edgar T. Thompson Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and professor of economics, was invited to submit a chapter to Eminent Economists II: Their Life and Work Philosophies, edited by Michael Szenberg and Lall B. Ramrattan. The volume was published in February by Cambridge University Press.  

Her autobiographical chapter "Confessions of a Wellesley FEM," sketches the evolution of her career and thinking as an economist. Two mentors, Wellesley Professor Carolyn Shaw Bell, her first economics professor, and Harvard Professor Richard Musgrave, "father of modern public finance," helped her find her place in a male-dominated field, both in terms of research and managing an academic life. After teaching at Wellesley, and at the Harvard schools of design and government, she came to Duke in 1986, with a focus on state and local public finance, which led to her work school finance, education policy and issues of equity in public policy.