Professor Jere R. Behrman (PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1966) is the William R. Kenan Professor of Economics and Director of the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been on the faculty since 1965. His research interests are in empirical micro economics, economic development, labor economics, human resources, economic demography and household behaviors. He has published over 250 professional articles and 27 books and monographs primarily on these topics. He has worked as a research consultant with numerous national and international organizations, including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank. He has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on over 40 research projects funded by organizations including the US National Institutes Health, the US National Science Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation. He has lectured widely in the US and internationally and has been involved in professional research or lecturing activities in over 40 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. He is widely known for being one of the most prolific empirical micro researchers in the social sciences, particularly on topics related to human resources and household behaviors. Though his work has been primarily on developing countries, he also has contributed considerably to empirical knowledge on these topics for the United States.
His work has been influential in our understanding of such diverse topics as to what extent peasant farmers respond to economic incentives and risk, to what extent international commodity agreements benefit producers versus consumers, how households allocated resources among their members, what are the determinants of and the returns to human resource investments in different contexts, how macro reforms effect the returns to different schooling levels and thus to the distribution of earnings, what are the impacts of demographic changes such as aging populations on economic outcomes, and what determines bargaining power within families. In addition to being one of the leading recipients of peer-reviewed competitive research grants, he has been awarded other honors such as being selected a Fullbright 40th Anniversary Distinguished Fellow in 1987, a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1980, A Guggenheim Foundation Faculty Fellow in 1979–1980, and a Ford Foundation Faculty Fellow in 1971–1972, as well as to participate in international academic exchange programs and to give distinguished lectures series in Asia and Latin America. |