Rate My Professor Alicia Modestino

Alicia Sasser Modestino is an Associate Professor with joint appointments in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the Department of Economics at Northeastern University, where she holds a 75% appointment in Public Policy. She serves as Director of the Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy since 2025, Founder and Executive Director of the Community to Community Impact Accelerator since 2022, and Faculty Lead of the Global Resilience Institute. Previously, she was Research Director of the Dukakis Center from 2020 to 2025 and Associate Director from 2015 to 2020. Before joining Northeastern in 2014, Modestino worked as Senior Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston from 2007 to 2014, Economist there from 2005 to 2007, Assistant Professor of Economics at Mount Holyoke College from 2004 to 2005, and held positions at Analysis Group and Mathematica Policy Research. She earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 2001, an A.M. in Economics from Harvard in 2000, and a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics magna cum laude from Boston University in 1993. She was a doctoral fellow in Harvard's Inequality and Social Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government.

Modestino's research focuses on labor and health economics, including youth employment and training, the future of work, skills mismatch, childcare, gender differences in the labor market, and the opioid crisis. Her work employs large-scale empirical evaluations using diverse data and methods. Key publications include "Gender Differences in Economics Seminars" (American Economic Review, 2026, with Dupas et al.), "No Longer Qualified? Changes in the Supply and Demand for Skills within Occupations" (Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 2026, with Burke et al.), "School’s Out: How Summer Youth Employment Programs Impact Academic Outcomes" (Education Finance and Policy, 2023, with Paulsen), "Upskilling: Do Employers Demand Greater Skill When Workers Are Plentiful?" (Review of Economics and Statistics, 2020, with Shoag and Ballance), and "How Do Summer Youth Employment Programs Improve Criminal Justice Outcomes, and for Whom?" (Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2019). She has amassed over $10 million in external funding from sources such as Arnold Ventures, the National Science Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation. Awards include Data Champion from the National Youth Employment Coalition (2025), Evidence Champion from J-PAL (2024), Global Network Accelerator Award (Northeastern, 2023), Excellence in Research and Creative Activity Award (Northeastern, 2022), and Outstanding Teaching Award (Northeastern, 2019). Her affiliations include Affiliated Researcher at J-PAL North America, Nonresident Fellow at Brookings, and Research Fellow at IZA Institute of Labor Economics.