Ellora Derenoncourt is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

. She is an assistant professor of Economics in the Industrial Relations Section of the Department of Economics at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

and a member of the Industrial Relations Section of Princeton Economics. She was previously at the Department of Economics and assistant professor of Public Policy at the

Goldman School of Public Policy The Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy, or the Goldman School of Public Policy (GSPP), is a public policy school and one of fourteen schools and colleges at the University of California, Berkeley. Originally named the Graduate Scho ...

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

. Her work focuses on labor economics, economic history and the study of inequality. Her research on

racial inequality in the United States Racial inequality in the United States identifies the social inequality and advantages and disparities that affect different races within the United States. These can also be seen as a result of historic oppression, inequality of inheritance, or ...

has been featured on

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

, and

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

Education

Derenoncourt graduated from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

with a Bachelor of Arts in Gender studies and a minor in molecular biology. In 2011 she received her Masters in Science in Human Geography Research from the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 millio ...

and got her

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

. in Economics from Harvard University. She was also a visiting student at the UC Berkeley Center for Equitable Growth from 2016 to 2017.

Research

Her work on

racial inequality Social inequality occurs when resources in a given society are distributed unevenly, typically through norms of allocation, that engender specific patterns along lines of socially defined categories of persons. It posses and creates gender c ...

has focused on the gaps in earnings by race and on the evolution of racial inequality in the 20th century. She has examined the backlash in the northern U.S. states toward the Great Migration and the resulting problems in black upward mobility. Her paper with Claire Montialoux demonstrates the role minimum wage played in racial income disparities between black and white workers in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where the expansion of the

minimum wage A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees—the price floor below which employees may not sell their labor. Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 20th century. Bec ...

in 1967 accounted for a 20% of the decrease in racial income gaps.Derenoncourt, E., & Montialoux, C. (2020)
Minimum Wages and Racial Inequality
UC Berkeley. Currently, Derenoncourt is working on her research on the economic history of institutions and the economics of inequality.

Awards

She was awarded the Economic History Association's Allan Nevins Prize for best dissertation in 2019 for her work in American Economic history. She is one of the

CIFAR The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is a Canadian-based global research organization that brings together teams of top researchers from around the world to address important and complex questions. It was founded in 1982 and is s ...

Azrieli Global Scholars for the 2021-2023 cohort.

Selected works

* * Derenoncourt, E., Bahn, K., & Montialoux, C. (2020). Why minimum wages are a critical tool for achieving racial justice in the U.S. labor market. WCEG Issue Brief. * Derenoncourt, E., & Montialoux, C. (2020). Opinion , To Reduce Racial Inequality, Raise the Minimum Wage. Nytimes.com. Retrieved June 3, 2021.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Derenoncourt, Ellora Harvard College alumni Alumni of the London School of Economics Goldman School of Public Policy faculty African-American economists American women economists 21st-century American economists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century African-American women Socialist economists African-American women academics