MELISSA KEARNEY, University of Maryland-College Park
I am honored to have been nominated to stand for the Policy Council of APPAM. I have a great appreciation for this fine association and a terrific admiration for the practitioners and scholars who have so capably brought this association to its current prominence. I believe that APPAM makes a wonderful contribution to the public good by providing an intellectual space – through annual meetings and the publication of JPAM – where academics and practitioners can share their research, insights, findings, speculations, and conversation. I have benefited from my attendance and participation at APPAM meetings since 2002, when I received my Ph.D. in economics from MIT and began my academic year. I was an assistant professor at Wellesley College for two years (2002-2004), before spending two years in residence at the Brookings Institution. In 2006 I accepted a tenure-track appointment at the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland. I am a non-resident fellow of Brookings and a Faculty Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. I am an applied economist working in public economics and labor economics. My research focuses on applied public policy questions and in particular, on issues relevant to low-income populations. I have concentrated on two separate areas: (1) anti-poverty programs, with an emphasis on women and children; and (2) gambling behavior and risk preferences, with an emphasis on state lotteries. I have also conducted research on labor market inequality. My work has been published in the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Human Resources, and Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, among others. My 2007 JPAM paper with Mark Duggan on child SSI participation was awarded the Vernon Memorial Prize by APPAM for research excellence.