Tara Watson

Tara Watson is an economist focused on U.S. social policy, with interests in the safety net, health, and immigration. She is professor of economics at Williams College, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources. In 2015-16, Watson served as deputy assistant secretary for microeconomic analysis in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Economic Policy. She was previously a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and a research associate at the Princeton Center for Research on Child Wellbeing. Dr. Watson earned her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 2003. Her 2021 book, “The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear,” written with journalist Kalee Thompson, is forthcoming from University of Chicago Press.