After studying she had received the 2023 Nobel Memorial Prize in Financial Sciences on Monday, Claudia Goldin, the Henry Lee Professor within the topic, publicly thanked her college students for pushing her to “the frontiers of data day by day.”

Associated

A lot of her former college students who’ve gone on to turn out to be colleagues rejoiced on the information of an honor they are saying is well-deserved, and even perhaps overdue.

Princeton economist Cecilia Rouse ’86, Ph.D. ’92, mentioned she is “completely thrilled” by Goldin’s choice. A former adviser to Presidents Barack Obama and Invoice Clinton, Rouse chaired the Council of Financial Advisers to President Biden till April.

“What they acknowledged was a physique of labor, which piece by piece has helped us to fill in a portrait and perceive the function of girls within the financial system over centuries. She has helped us to grasp the wage construction over the twentieth century. She’s performed work on training, and she or he does so with intention; she does so creatively,” Rouse mentioned of Goldin, who was her doctoral thesis adviser at Harvard.

Goldin is just the third lady to win the prize and the primary to take action solo. She was additionally the primary lady to obtain tenure in Harvard’s Economics Division in 1989.

“Claudia marched in to doc the altering roles of girls in society at a time when many male economists simply didn’t care,” mentioned Betsey Stevenson, Ph.D. ’01, who counts Goldin as a mentor and is now a professor of economics and public coverage on the College of Michigan. “Claudia understood that work and life have been intertwined.”

Goldin’s Nobel recognition “means a lot for the evolution of economics” given her necessary work and “the military of economists” she has educated through the years, she mentioned.

The prize “displays her imaginative and prescient to have the ability to see how ladies’s expectations for his or her lives have been being reshaped over time, as alternatives shifted, as social prices and advantages shifted, as monetary prices and advantages shifted, and her tireless work as an information detective to factually doc them,” Stevenson mentioned. “This additionally performed out within the classroom and in her workplace as she understood that her college students have been wrestling with these very selections.”

Doctor-economist Marcella Alsan ’99, M.P.H. ’05, Ph.D. ’12 can attest to that. She recalled bumping into Goldin and her husband, Lawrence Katz, the Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics, within the division’s kitchen when she was a graduate pupil. Alsan had not too long ago given beginning — “which was uncommon” for grad college students again then — and was feeling raveled and burdened.

Alsan assumed they didn’t know who she was, so she quietly headed for the door, hoping to slide out.

Goldin “stopped me and requested me to sit down down, and she or he referred to as me by my identify, which was revolutionary for a grad pupil,” mentioned Alsan, who now runs the Well being Inequality Lab on the Malcolm Wiener Middle for Public Coverage at Harvard Kennedy College. “She first requested me, how was my younger household? She acknowledged that I had been pregnant and that I had one other little one at house. After which she requested me, what was I engaged on?”

Alsan replied that she was researching the tsetse fly and its long-term results on the trajectory of poverty in Africa as a attainable dissertation matter. “She was so enthusiastic and mentioned, ‘You must examine that! You must discuss to this particular person and that particular person, and we’ll get you in contact with these individuals!’” mentioned Alsan, who was named a MacArthur Basis fellow in 2021. “It simply modified the trajectory of my profession.”

Extra necessary, Alsan mentioned, was Goldin’s recognition and appreciation for the complexity of her life at the moment.

“She noticed my duality as each a mom and a scholar, and she or he embraced each of them,” mentioned Alsan. “And I don’t suppose I used to be particular. I feel she did that for thus many ladies, and for thus many males, as properly.”

In 2000, Goldin and Rouse wrote a landmark paper on how “blind” auditions performed behind identity-obscuring screens improved the likelihood of a lady being employed or promoted in a symphony orchestra. Its origin, Rouse mentioned, is emblematic of Goldin’s creativity and her self-described detective-like method.

“It began once I was a graduate pupil. I used to be on the Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis, and I used to be enjoying [the flute] within the graduate pupil orchestra. Claudia mentioned, ‘What are you aware about blind auditions?’ I mentioned, ‘I do know nothing. Why?’ And she or he mentioned, ‘As a result of a pupil had a throw-away line in a paper the place she mentioned, ‘And, after all, the usage of blind auditions will increase the presence of girls in symphony orchestras.’”

Rouse quickly discovered herself placing apart her dissertation and contacting musicians, together with her personal flute trainer, surveying orchestras throughout the nation, digging into their archives, and sitting in on auditions making an attempt to piece collectively the required information.

“Financial historians don’t have huge information units [as] economists who do empirical work right now readily have,” mentioned Rouse. “If there have been information units, they could be in a file drawer someplace. She has been artistic at discovering these items and stitching collectively what occurred.

“I nonetheless describe it as probably the most enjoyable paper that I’ve ever written,” mentioned Rouse, “in no small half due to working with Claudia, but additionally due to the method of uncovering and studying and placing the items collectively.”

Goldin’s relentless “rigor” in approaching issues, dogged pursuit of knowledge and details, and her utility of theoretical considering to the evaluation of various details “has been extremely influential within the area,” mentioned Carola Frydman, M.A. ’04, Ph.D. ’06, a former instructing assistant to Goldin who got here from Argentina to get a doctorate in economics at Harvard “due to her.”

“She’s extremely curious, and never solely about issues that she works on,” mentioned Frydman. “She’s not an accommodating mentor. She pushes you; she needs you to work laborious, and to suppose deeply and to attempt to get issues proper,” however can be “extremely welcoming” and treats everybody as a peer.

Goldin has often made clear that her scholarship doesn’t embrace creating coverage options. However, her work on discrimination, ladies within the labor drive, and training has opened new areas of inquiry and spurred associated analysis and policymaking for others.

“Claudia’s work is extremely necessary as a result of it brings key, historic views to economics analysis which have generally been missed. Her work on gender and labor markets, which has modified the best way we view the gender hole in earnings, is a superb instance,” mentioned Maya Sen ’00, A.M. ’11, Ph.D. ’12, a professor of public coverage and director of the Stone Program in Wealth Distribution, Inequality, and Social Coverage on the Kennedy College, the place Goldin has suggested college students and labored with college associates for greater than a decade.

“I don’t suppose it’s an exaggeration to say that Claudia principally paved the trail for economists, and social scientists extra usually, to check issues like gender and race within the financial system from a quantitative perspective,” which has helped the broader examine of inequality to flourish, Sen mentioned in an e mail.

Goldin’s work on discrimination and ladies within the labor drive, particularly the “blind auditions” paper, was “completely instrumental” in advancing scholarship on ladies and public coverage efforts on gender fairness, mentioned Iris Bohnet, co-founder of the Girls and Public Coverage Program on the Kennedy College.

“It turned such an necessary instance of discrimination, of exhibiting how discrimination occurs, but additionally of beginning to open up the chance that we may overcome discrimination by what I name ‘behavioral design’ — redesigning how we do our work, how we consider individuals, notably on this case, how we promote,” Bohnet mentioned.

“It actually formed my complete considering on not simply the measuring of discrimination, but additionally the overcoming of discrimination,” she mentioned. “That as a substitute of fixing individuals, we wanted to repair the system, and rethink how we do issues.”