STEP UP: What Works in Education?

Professor David Figlio is the Orrington Lunt Professor of Education and Social Policy and Dean of the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, where he also serves as Director of the Institute for Policy Research. An internationally recognised economist, his research focuses on education and health policy, including school accountability, standards, welfare policy, policy design, and the relationship between education and health. He collaborates extensively with state and local education and health agencies and led a National Science Foundation - funded network promoting the use of linked administrative data to inform education policy. In 2017, he was elected to the National Academy of Education.

Professor Figlio's research had appeared in leading journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Journal of Human Resources. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Research Fellow at IZA, and a member of the CESifo Network on the Economics of Education. He also serves as the founding editor of Education Finance and Policy and is Editor of the Journal of Human Resources. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1995.