1999 Distinguished Public Policy Lecture
FOR RELEASE: Immediate
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Rebecca Blank, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers who is on leave from Northwestern University, will address the question "When Should Public Policymakers Rely on Private Markets?" as the featured speaker in the 1999 Institute for Policy Research Distinguished Public Policy Lecture Series on Public Goals and Private Markets: Opportunities and Constraints.
The address by Blank, professor of economics and faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern, will run from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Feb. 22 on the University's Evanston campus, Hardin Hall, Rebecca Crown Center, 633 Clark St.
A nationally known labor and welfare expert, Blank will offer her perspective on when government should own and run services themselves; when they should try to contract out such services (with oversight or regulation); and when they should let the private market function unimpeded. She will touch upon Social Security and welfare programs as examples of these issues.
Blank, who was the first director of the Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research. left for Washington, D. C. in the summer of 1997, after President Clinton nominated her for a position on the Council of Economic Advisers. The select group of policymakers is responsible for providing the President with economic analysis and advice on the development and implementation of a wide range of domestic and international economic policy issues. The Council consists of a Chair and two members whose appointments need the consent of the Senate.
Because of her leadership on poverty policy, Blank was instrumental in obtaining a $7.5 million award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to launch the Joint Poverty Center in June 1995. Under her direction, the center quickly developed into a clearinghouse for some of the nation's most pressing issues, developing a national network of scholars who collaborate with Northwestern University and University of Chicago researchers to disseminate poverty-related research.
Her latest book, "It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty," argues that trade is only one of the factors holding down the wages of the unskilled. Blank rejects the idea that welfare programs have made the poor worse off and offers a range of different policies, including an expansion of the earned-income tax credit, that would make a big difference without necessarily a big cost.
A prolific writer, Blank has published extensively in economics and policy-related journals and has written a number of newspaper perspectives. Previously, she served as a senior staff person for the Council of Economic Advisers (1989-1990), and she has served on a host of advisory committees for a broad range of research and evaluation projects relating to job training and anti-poverty efforts. Among her many honors, Blank was a recipient of the David Kershaw award in 1993, given biannually to the young scholar whose research has had the most public policy impact.
Before joining Northwestern in 1989, she was an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. She received a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in June 1983 and a bachelor's degree, summa cum laude, from the University of Minnesota in June 1976.
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