Helen F. Ladd, Edgar T. Thompson Distinguished Professor of Public Policy Studies and Professor of Economics
Office Location: 214A Sanford Inst Bldg
Office Phone: +1 919 613 7352
Email Address: helen.ladd@duke.edu
Areas of Expertise:
Economics
Education
Public Finance
Education:
PhD, Harvard University, 1974
MSc with distinction, London School of Economics, 1968
B.A., Wellesley College, 1967
Research Categories: Education Policy and State & Local Public Finance
Research Description: Education finance and policy; state and local public finance; intergovernmental fiscal relations
Representative Publications (More Publications)
- H.F. Ladd and Edward B. Fiske eds.. Handbook of Research in Education Finance and Policy. Routledge, 2008. (Official handbook of the American Education Finance Association.)
- H.F. Ladd with Charles Clotfelter and Jacob Vigdor. "The Academic Achievement Gap in Grades 3 to 8." Review of Economics and Statistics (forthcoming). [w12207]
- H.F. Ladd with Charles Clotfelter and Jacob Vigdor. "Teacher-Student Matching and the Assessment of Teacher Effectiveness." Journal of Human Resources 41.4 (Fall 2006): 778-820. [online]
- H.F. Ladd with Robert Bifulco. "The Impact of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: Evidence from North Carolina." Journal of Education Finance and Policy 1.1 (2006): 50-90. [edfp.2006.1.1.50]
- H.F. Ladd with Edward B. Fiske. "Racial Equity in Education: How Far Has South Africa Come?." Perspectives in Education Special Issue on Education Finance 24 (June 2006): 95-108.
- H.F. Ladd with Edward B. Fiske. Elusive Equity: Education Reform in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Brookings Institution Press, 2004. (Paperback edition published by the HSRC Press in Cape Town, South Africa in 2005)
Bio/Profile
Helen F. Ladd is the Edgar Thompson Professor of Public Policy Studies and professor of economics at Duke University. Prior to 1986, she taught at Dartmouth College, Wellesley College, and at Harvard University, first in the City and Regional Planning Program and then in the Kennedy School of Government. She graduated with a B.A. degree from Wellesley College in 1967, received a master's degree from the London School of Economics in 1968, and earned her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1974.
Most of her current research focuses on education policy. Most recently, she has co-authored (with Edward Fiske) Elusive Equity: Education Reform in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Brookings Institution, 2004 and HSRC Press in paperback, 2005). She is also the editor of Holding Schools Accountable: Performance-Based Reform in Education (Brookings Institution, 1996) and the coauthor (with Edward Fiske) of When Schools Compete: A Cautionary Tale (Brookings Institution, 2000) which draws lessons for the U.S from New Zealand’s experience with self-governing schools, parental choice and competition. From 1996-99 she co-chaired a National Academy of Sciences Committee on Education Finance. In that capacity she is the co-editor of two books: a set of background papers, Equity and Adequacy in Education Finance, and the final report, Making Money Matter: Financing America’s Schools.
During the past few years she has written articles on charter schools, school-based accountability, market-based reforms in education, parental choice and competition, intergenerational conflict and the willingness to support education, and the effects of HUD’s Moving to Opportunity Program on educational opportunities and outcomes. Currently she is working on teacher quality and student achievement using based on North Carolina data as well as on various issues related to charter schools.
As a more general expert on state and local public finance and education policy, Professor Ladd has also written extensively on the fiscal implications of growth, property taxation, education finance, tax and expenditure limitations, intergovernmental aid, state economic development, and the fiscal problems of U.S cities. In addition, she has co-authored books on discrimination in mortgage lending and the capitalization of property taxes and edited a volume on tax and expenditure limitations. She is the co-author (with John Yinger) of America's Ailing Cities: Fiscal Health and the Design of Urban Policy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989; updated edition, 1991) and the primary author of Local Government Tax and Land Use Policies in the United States: Understanding the Links (Elgar Publishers, 1998).
She has been active in the National Tax Association (which she served as president in 1993-94) and the Association for Public Policy and Management, and has consulted on tax policy and intergovernmental relations for all three levels of government. She has also been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a senior research fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. With the support of two Fulbright grants, she spent the spring term of 1998 in New Zealand studying that country’s education system and the spring term of 2002 doing similar research in South Africa.
