Alicia Sasser Modestino

College of Social Sciences and Humanities Associate Professor, Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Economics; Associate Director, Dukakis Center

Alicia Sasser Modestino is an Associate Professor with appointments in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the Department of Economics at Northeastern University. Since 2015, Dr. Modestino has also served as the Associate Director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy. She is also a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program and an invited researcher of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT. Previously, Modestino was a Senior Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston where she led numerous research projects on regional economic and policy issues.

Dr. Modestino’s current research focuses on labor and health economics including changing skill requirements, youth development, healthcare, housing, and migration. Her work has been funded by the William T. Grant Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Boston Foundation, the National Security Agency (NSA), and J-PAL. She has published in peer-reviewed publications including Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Human Resources, Labour Economics, Health Affairs, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Regional Science and Urban Economics. Dr. Modestino’s research has been covered extensively in the media including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, Politico, and Vox. She has appeared on NPR’s On Point, WBUR’s Radio Boston, WCVB’s CityLine, NBC News, and FOX25 News.

Modestino holds both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, where she also served as a doctoral fellow in the Inequality and Social Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government.