Research interests
theoretical and empirical work in public economics, including insurance markets, welfare measurement of government policies, and intergenerational mobility
Nathaniel Hendren is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hendren seeks to understand barriers to the American Dream by quantifying lack of economic mobility and economic opportunity in private markets and identifying the source of those barriers through his work. Hendren is also passionate about analysis of public policy outcomes. He is a founder and co-director of both Opportunity Insights, an organization dedicated to addressing barriers to economic opportunity, and Policy Impacts, a non-partisan organization dedicated to improving the quality of governance. He is the lead co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics and associate editor at American Economic Review: Insights.