Ebonya Washington, newly named as the Samuel C. Park Jr. Professor of Economics, specializes in public finance and political economy with research interests in the interplay of race, gender, and political representation; the behavioral motivations and consequences of political participation; and the processes through which low-income Americans meet their financial needs.
A graduate of Brown University, Washington earned her Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She lectured in economics at MIT before joining the Yale faculty in 2004 as an assistant professor of economics. Prior to her new appointment, Washington served as the Henry Kohn Associate Professor of Economics. Since 2004, she has also held positions at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Washington’s research has been published in the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, among other publications. She is associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the foreign editor of the Review of Economic Studies. She serves in advisory roles at the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Science, and is co-chair of the Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession.
Washington is the recipient of Yale’s Arthur Greer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication or Research and a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, among other honors.