Jordan Matsudaira is an Associate Professor of Economics and Education Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is also a Visiting Associate Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Senior Research Scholar at the Community College Research Center, a Nonresident Fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC. His research focuses on using government administrative data to understand the causal impact of education and labor market policies and institutions on the economic outcomes of low-income Americans.
From 2013 to 2015, he served on President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers as Chief Economist. While there, he worked on labor, education, and safety net policies, including gainful employment regulations of for-profit colleges and an expansion of the federal overtime protections in the Fair Labor Standards Act. He also led a multiagency team in developing the College Scorecard, a data tool providing college-specific information on student outcomes (an article about my involvement is here).
Matsudaira earned his PhD in Economics and Public Policy from the University of Michigan. He earned a master's in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a BA from Union College. He was previously a Robert Wood Johnson postdoctoral fellow in health policy research at the University of California, Berkeley.
Matsudaira is currently at leave serving as the Deputy Under Secretary and (inaugural) Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Education.