Polarization, Social Cohesion, and the Economy

Teresa A. Sullivan is President Emerita and University Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia.

Dr. Sullivan previously served as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan. Prior to her work at Michigan, she was executive vice chancellor for academic affairs for the University of Texas System and a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a graduate of Michigan State University’s James Madison College and earned her doctoral degree in sociology from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Sullivan is a respected scholar in labor force demography, and the author or coauthor of six books and many scholarly articles. She is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Clemens Sedmak is professor of social ethics and director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame and is concurrent professor at Notre Dame’s Institute for Social Concerns. Before coming to Notre Dame, Dr. Sedmak was the FD Maurice Professor for Moral Theology and Social Theology at King’s College London. He has held multiple positions at the University of Salzburg, serving as Director of the Center for Ethics and Poverty Research and Chair for Epistemology and Philosophy of Religion. He also was President of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Ethics in Salzburg.

Dr. Sedmak holds doctoral degrees in philosophy, theology and social theory. Born in Austria, he has studied at the University of Innsbruck, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), Maryknoll (New York) and the University of Linz. He has been a visiting professor at the Jomo Kenyatta University in Nairobi, the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, the University of Jena in Germany, the Vienna Business University, and the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.

James J. Heckman is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago where he is also the Director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development. Much of his work has focused on understanding the origins of major social and economic problems related to inequality, social mobility, discrimination, skill formation and regulation, and devising and evaluating alternative strategies for addressing those problems. In 2000, he shared the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on the microeconometrics of diversity and heterogeneity and for establishing a sound causal basis for public policy evaluation. He has also received numerous other awards for his work and was made a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in 2017.

Prof. Dr. Michael Hüther has been Director and Member of the Presidium of the German Economic Institute since July 2004. He studied economics as well as medieval and modern history from 1982 to 1987 at the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen. Upon completion of his doctorate in economics, in 1991 he became a member of the scientific staff of the Council of Experts for the Evaluation of Macroeconomic Development. In 1995 he was appointed Secretary General of the German Council of Economic Advisers. In 1999, he joined DekaBank as chief economist and in 2001 additionally as Division Manger of economics and communication.

Since August 2001, Prof. Hüther is Honorary Professor at the European Business School in Oestrich-Winkel.

In the academic year 2016-2017 and in autumn 2019, he was Gerda Henkel Adjunct Professor in the Department of German Studies at Stanford University.

Joseph P. Kaboski is the David F. and Erin M. Seng Foundation Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame and a Fellow of the Kellogg Institute. His research focuses on growth, development and international economics, with an emphasis on structural change, finance and development, schooling and growth, microfinance, explaining international relative price patterns, and the role of inventories in international trade. In 2012, he was awarded the prestigious Frisch Medal, awarded biannually for the best paper in the journal Econometrica over the previous five years.  He has published scholarly articles in many journals including, the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Economic Theory, the Journal of Monetary Economics, and the Journal of the European Economic Association.  He is an Associate Editor at the Journal of Human Capital. a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Fellow and Board Member of the Bureau of Research in Economics Analysis of Development.  He has consulted for the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago, Minneapolis, and St. Louis; the World Bank; the International Monetary Fund; and is a Senior Advisor and Board Member to the research department of the Central Bank of Armenia. He is the president of CREDO, a past consultant to Catholic Relief Services, and is currently a Consultant to the USCCB, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.  He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 2001 and has previously been an assistant and associate professor at Ohio State University and a visiting professor at the University of Chicago.