Will Dobbie, labor economist studying poverty in America, joins Princeton Economics faculty
The Economics Department at Princeton is pleased to announce that Will Dobbie has joined the department as a Professor of Economics. He is also a member of the Industrial Relations Section and the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance. Princeton was Dobbie’s first teaching appointment from 2013 to 2019, and the Economics Department is thrilled to welcome him back.
Dobbie’s research studies the causes and consequences of poverty in America to understand how we can give individuals from all backgrounds a better chance of success. His recent work has examined racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, the changing nature of economic mobility in the United States, and how to build more human-centered AI. Dobbie earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2013. Before joining the faculty at Princeton, he was a tenured professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. Dobbie is also the co-editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics.
“Changing Opportunity: Sociological Mechanisms Underlying Growing Class Gaps and Shrinking Race Gaps in Economic Mobility,” a paper published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics in May 2026, shows the change in intergenerational mobility across race and class. Dobbie and his co-authors, Raj Chetty, Benjamin Goldman, Sonya Porter, and Crystal Yang, found that while class gaps grew, race gaps shrank among monetary and non-monetary outcomes, such as educational attainment, standardized test scores, and mortality rates. Using a quasi-experimental design, they show that “children’s outcomes are most strongly related to the parental employment rates of peers they are more likely to interact with, such as those in their own birth cohort, suggesting that the relationship between children’s outcomes and parental employment rates is mediated by social interaction.”
In “Algorithmic Recommendations and Human Discretion,” a paper published in The Review of Economic Studies in July 2026, Dobbie and his co-authors, Victoria Angelova and Crystal Yang, question whether human override of predictive AI recommendations leads to better or worse outcomes. Observing judges making bail decisions, they found that 90% of decisions underperform the algorithm, while 10% of judges outperform it in both accuracy and fairness.
When asked about what he is looking forward to as he returns to Princeton, Dobbie said, “Princeton is such a special place for economics; I am very excited to rejoin this group of peers whom I have admired and enjoyed working with for so long. I am also looking forward to teaching and learning from the students of the Department.”
Owen Zidar, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and Acting Chair of the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton, said of Dobbie, “Will is one of the very best labor economists of his generation, and we are thrilled to have him back at Princeton. His research on charter schools, consumer bankruptcy, and bail has changed how economists think about these important institutions and has provided some of the best evidence on how they affect low-income Americans. He is a generous colleague and advisor, and our students and faculty will greatly benefit from having him here!”
“Will Dobbie was a longtime JRCPPF faculty affiliate, and we’re thrilled to welcome him back to Princeton,” shared Atif Mian, the John H. Laporte, Jr. Class of 1967 Professor of Economics at Princeton University and director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance. “He’s both a dedicated teacher and outstanding scholar. His empirical work on household finance, credit, and labor market consequences will help extend the research agenda, with important implications for policy.”