Mackenzie Alston of Florida State Named First NBER Diversity Fellow

Mackenzie Alston, an assistant professor of economics at Florida State University, has been named the inaugural recipient of the NBER Post-Doctoral Fellowship to Promote Diversity in the Economics Profession. She will spend the 2021-22 academic year conducting research at the NBER’s Cambridge office. The selection committee for this new fellowship chose Alston from among more than 70 applicants.

Alston’s research uses both survey data and experimental methods to investigate the role of discrimination and stereotypes. She has studied the ways in which women respond to labor market discrimination, and the impact of stereotypes on the academic performance of students from under-represented groups. She is currently studying how the recent social justice movement has affected the productivity of college and university faculty members.

Alston received her PhD from Texas A&M University and joined the faculty at Florida State in 2019.