Melissa Kearney

Melissa Schettini Kearney (born 1974) is an American economist who is the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). She is also director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group; a non-resident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution; a scholar affiliate and member of the board of the Notre Dame Wilson-Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO); and a scholar affiliate of the MIT Abdul Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). She has been an editorial board member of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy since 2019 and of the Journal of Economic Literature since 2017. Kearney served as director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings from 2013 to 2015 and as co-chair of the JPAL State and Local Innovation Initiative from 2015 to 2018.