Karen Dynan

About

Karen Dynan is a Professor of the Practice in the Department of Economics and at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Her research interests include fiscal and monetary policy, consumer behavior, and economic measurement. Prior to joining Harvard, Dynan served as Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy and Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 2014 to 2017. She also held the position of Vice President and Co-Director of the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution from 2009 to 2013.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Sociology
• Demographic economics
• Labour economics
• Demography
• Medicine
• Finance
• Gerontology

Selected publications

• The Risk of Financial Hardship in Retirement: A Cohort Analysis

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2019-01-01 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Gender gaps in South Korea’s labour market: children explain most of the gender employment gap, but little of the gender wage gap

  Applied Economics Letters · 2023-05-03 · 17 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  South Korea’s gender wage and employment gaps are among the largest in the OECD. Using labour force survey data over 2010–19, we estimate gender wage and employment gaps, and child earnings penalties, for women aged 25–54. We show (i) that the large gender gaps in South Korea’s labour market are mostly not a function of differential sorting by gender along education, occupation, or industry lines, (ii) that caring for children (and, perhaps increasingly, for the elderly) is the major factor inhi…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Changes in Racial Gaps in Retirement Security over Time

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Measuring Household Wealth in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics: The Role of Retirement Assets

  Working paper series · 2019-12-01 · 12 citations

  paratextOpen access

  While the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) has much to offer researchers studying household behavior, one limitation is that its summary measure of wealth is not as broad as those of other commonly used surveys, such as the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), because it does not include the value of defined-contribution (DC) pensions.This paper describes the pension data available in the PSID and shows how they can be used to create a more comprehensive picture of household finances.We then…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Why gender disparities persist in South Korea’s labor market

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022 · 10 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Robert C. Feenstra

  University of California, Davis

  36 shared

• Randall S. Kroszner

  36 shared

• Susanto Basu

  36 shared

• John M. Abowd

  36 shared

• Jonathan A. Parker

  New School

  36 shared

• Ana Aizcorbe

  Bureau of Economic Analysis

  36 shared

• Douglas W. Elmendorf

  34 shared

• Daniel E. Sichel

  Wellesley College

  20 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  Harvard University

  1993

• B.A., Economics

  Stanford University

  1988

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Andrei Shleiferh-200
• Alberto Alesinah-161
• John Y. Campbellh-132