Philip Oreopoulos

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Philip Oreopoulos is a Canadian economist and a professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. He studies how education, work, and public policy affect people’s lives.

Education and career highlights
- He earned a BA from the University of Western Ontario in 1995, an MA from the University of British Columbia in 1996, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002, where he worked with renowned economists such as David Card and Alan J. Auerbach.
- He began his career at the University of Toronto, advancing from assistant professor to associate professor in 2007 and full professor in 2012.
- He has taught as a visiting professor at MIT and at Harvard University.
- Oreopoulos helps lead the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) in education research, alongside Karthik Muralidharan.
- He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a senior fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

What he studies
- His main areas are the economics of education, labor economics, urban economics, experimental economics, and public finance.
- He uses experiments and field studies to understand how schooling and policy affect earnings, health, voting, and other life outcomes.

Key findings from his research
- Compulsory schooling: An extra year of high school can raise earnings by about 10–15% per year of schooling, even if only some people are directly affected.
- Why students drop out: Many dropouts are influenced by how they expect their future to unfold, not just a dislike of school. Policies that encourage students to stay in school can improve long-run outcomes.
- Education and politics: More educated people are generally more politically engaged. In the United States, less educated individuals are less likely to vote, partly due to voting barriers.
- Intergenerational effects: An extra year of a parent’s education can reduce the chance a child repeats a grade by about 2–4%.
- Other findings: Graduates who start their careers during a recession earn less at first, but may catch up over time; schooling also has non-financial benefits (like patience and trust) that can be as important as earnings; neighborhood quality has a smaller impact on long-term earnings than family environment; poor infant health can predict higher mortality and worse long-term outcomes.

Recent work with randomized trials
- Providing a mix of academic support and financial incentives can improve grades and studying skills for female freshmen, but may not help male students as much.
- Combining help with completing college financial aid forms and providing aid estimates can significantly boost college attendance and aid receipt for low-income students, more than just giving information alone.

Awards
- In 2006, he won the Robert Mundell Prize for the best paper by a young economist in the Canadian Journal of Economics.

Rank and affiliations
- He is ranked among the top 2% of economists in IDEAS/RePEc.
- He is a co-chair of J-PAL’s education sector, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a senior fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

External links
- He maintains a CV and a university page with more details about his work.