Larry D. Singell

PLC 539; 541-346-4672; lsingell@uoregon.edu

Biographical Information

Larry D. Singell, Professor and Department Chair, received his B.A. in Economics in 1983 from the University of Colorado, a M.A. in 1984 and a Ph.D. in 1988 from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He joined the UO faculty in 1988.

Resrach Interests

Larry Singell primarily works the field of labor economics. His research focuses on the effects of human capital, race, and gender on opportunities and choices and the role of higher education in the U.S. economy. In one recently published study, Professor Singell uses a unique panel of AEA economists to test for gender differences in promotion in a profession with a well-defined promotion and job hierarchy and where men and women exhibit relatively similar labor-market attachment. Over the period from the 1960s through the early 1980s, the results suggest that professional attainment and career advancement for female economists are inferior to comparable male colleagues. These gender differences remain despite controls for unobserved heterogeneity and self-selection between academic and non-academic jobs. Nonetheless, there is evidence that promotion prospects for female economists have improved at all ranks, and within both Ph.D.-granting institutions and institutions that do not confer a Ph.D. Professor Singell is currently examining how financial aid effects the educational opportunities of college students. Both college- and government-sponsored financial-aid programs for students in the United States now focus more on merit, rather than need. There is, however, little empirical evidence on the distributional effects of merit-based aid. This paper develops a probit model of the enrollment process that is estimated using data for a large public university over several years. The results show that merit-based aid increases the likelihood of enrollment for all students, but that financially-able students respond disproportionately, even with merit held constant. Thus, the increased emphasis on merit in college financial aid may exacerbate the trend toward greater income inequality in the United States, even among students of equal merit.

Teaching

Professor Singell teachings core microeconomic theory, econometrics, and labor at the graduate level. At the undergraduate level he teaches labor economics, public economics, and principles of economics.