PERSON: Susan Collins

Dean, professor

Susan M. Collins is the Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of Public Policy and a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.<br> <br> The Ford School is one of the nation’s top public policy programs, known for the excellence of its faculty; the firm grounding of its degree programs in social science research; and its strong connections with scholars, programs, and opportunities from all parts of the world-class University of Michigan.<br> <br> Dean Collins’s area of expertise is international economics, including issues in both macroeconomics and trade. Her research interests center on determinants of economic growth in developed and developing economies, and issues raised by increasing cross-national economic integration. Her work has been published in numerous professional journals. Examples include: “Rebalancing the U.S. Economy in a Post-Crisis World” Asian Development Bank Institute (2010), “Accounting for Growth: Comparing China and India,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, (2008), “The Empirics of Growth: An Update,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, (2003) – co-authored with Barry Bosworth — and “Minority Groups in the Economics Profession,” Journal of Economic Perspectives (2000). She edited or co-edited the annual Brookings Trade Forum from 1999 to 2007. Recent volumes focus on Foreign Direct Investment (2007), Global Labor Markets? (2006) and Offshoring White-Collar Work (2005). She contributed to and co-edited the book The Economy of Puerto Rico – Restoring Growth, (Brookings Institution, 2006).<br> <br> Dean Collins is currently also a nonresident senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at Brookings, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and vice president of the Association for Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA).<br> <br> Before coming to Michigan, she held positions as a professor of economics at Georgetown University, an associate professor of economics at Harvard University and a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund. She served as a senior staff economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during 1989-90. Among other activities, she was an elected member of the American Economic Association’s (AEA) Executive Committee during 2005-08 and chaired the AEA Committee on the Status of Minority Groups during 1994-98.<br> <br> She received her B.A., summa cum laude, in economics from Harvard University in 1980, and her Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984.<br> <br> — fordschool.umich.edu