Adriana Kugler


Adriana Kugler is a Colombian-American economist and professor of public policy at Georgetown University. She served as the Chief Economist to U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis from September 6, 2011 to January 4, 2013.

Education

Adriana Kugler received her Bachelor of Arts degree from McGill University in 1991, graduating with first class joint honors in economics and political science. In 1997, she was awarded her Ph.D. by the University of California at Berkeley, Ph.D.; her advisors were Nobel laureate George Akerlof, Nada Eissa, and David K. Levine.

Academic appointments

Dr. Adriana Kugler is Vice-Provost for Faculty and a full professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy. She was founder and co-director of the International Summer Institute on Policy Evaluation between 2010-2013. She served as chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor in 2011 and 2012, where she worked actively on developing policies and proposals on unemployment insurance, training programs, retirement benefits, overtime pay and minimum wages, immigration, disability insurance and occupational safety regulations. Prior to coming to Georgetown, she was a full and associate professor at the economics departments at the University of Houston and at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.
Kugler is a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Labor Studies program and a research fellow of the Center for Economic Policy Research in London, the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration in London, and the Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality at Stanford University and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Kugler has served on the editorial boards of the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, The Journal of Labor and Development, the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Labour Economics, Applied Economics Quarterly and Economia.

Research awards

Kugler was the 2007 recipient of the John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award from the Labor and Employment Relations Association, in recognition of her research contributions to the field of labor and industrial relations.
In 2010, one of her papers, "Trade Reforms and Market Selection: Evidence from Manufacturing Firms in Colombia" won first prize for Best Contribution in the area of "Globalization, Regulations and Development" from the Global Development Network.
Her research interests focus in areas like labor markets and policy evaluation. She has been the recipient of numerous research grants for studies in areas which include the role of public policies, unemployment, and immigration on labor markets and policy evaluation in developed and developing countries.

Selected publications

Kugler's work has been published in the top general interest and specialized journals in Economics and Public Policy, including the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic & Statistics, the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Development Economics and the Journal of Policy Reform. Her research has been covered in multiple reports, including he World Development Report published by the World Bank, and the annual development reports published by the Inter-American Development Bank and the OECD.
For the above articles, as well as more complete lists of Published Articles and Research Papers, reference may be made to Kugler's internet pages at the University of Houston and Georgetown Public Policy Institute.

Media coverage

Kugler's academic and policy work has been covered in print media as well as radio and television, including The Washington Post, The Economist, NPR, NBC Latino, Fox Business, the Financial Times, Telemundo, Univision, NTN24, National Journal, The Atlantic, U.S. News & World Report, MSNBC, CNBC, The New York Times, BBC Mundo, CNNMoney, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Nightly Business News, amongst others. Kugler has also been called on to testify before Congress on issues such as immigration and the economy.