Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark

Deborah Cobb-Clark has been a Chief Investigator in the Life Course Centre since its formation in 2014 and is the Deputy Director of the Centre. She is a Professor of Economics at the University of Sydney, a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia, and one of the country’s leading academic economists.

Deborah earned a PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the University of Sydney, she was the Ronald Henderson Professor and Director of the Melbourne Institute at the University of Melbourne. She has also held positions at the US Labor Department, Illinois State University, and the Australian National University where she was the founding director of The Social Policy Evaluation, Analysis and Research (SPEAR) Centre. She is Director of the Program in Gender and Families at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany.

Her research agenda centres on the effect of social policy on labour market outcomes including immigration, sexual and racial harassment, health, old-age support, and education and youth transitions. She has published in leading international journals and is a former co-editor of the Journal of Population Economics.