Nationality American Role Economist | Name Julie Nelson | |
 | ||
Institutions Bureau of Labor Statistics, University of California, Davis, University of Massachusetts Boston, Global Development and Environment Institute Contributions Application of feminist theory to questions of the definition of the discipline of economics Books Microeconomics in Context, Macroeconomics in Context, Economics for Humans, Feminism - objectivity and econ, Economics: Discipline Analysis Similar People Marianne Ferber, Neva Goodwin, Frank Ackerman | ||
Prof. Julie A. Nelson, feminist economist
Julie A. Nelson (born 1956) is an American feminist economist and Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston, most known for her application of feminist theory to questions of the definition of the discipline of economics, and its models and methodology. Nelson received her Ph.D. degree in Economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her work focuses on gender and economics, philosophy and methodology of economics, ecological economics, and quantitative methods. Nelson is among the founders and the most highly cited scholars in the field of feminist economics.
Contents
Career
Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics, a 1993 book Nelson co-edited with Marianne A. Ferber, has been called a 'landmark' and the 'manifesto' of feminist economics. A follow-up volume, Feminist Economics Today, summarizes the development of the field over the following ten years Nelson is author or co-author of four additional books and numerous academic articles on both feminist theory and the empirical study of household behavior. Her 2006 book Economics for Humans dismisses the view that markets are inexorable "machines" and discusses how a better understanding of the relation of economics and values could improve both business and care work. She argues that the current approach to studying the economy as though it were an asocial machine, using only tools that emphasize 'detachment, mathematical reasoning, formality and abstration', is narrow and damaging. She suggests that the metaphor of a "beating heart" would better frame discussions about the economy in terms of values. Her most recent work addresses issues of ethics and economics, particularly in relation to climate change, and how stereotypes about women have distorted recent behavioral economics research.
Nelson was a founding member of the International Association for Feminist Economics and is an Associate Editor of the journal Feminist Economics. Nelson started her career at the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, subsequently became a tenured Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis, and then moved to the Boston, Massachusetts area where she is currently Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a Senior Research Fellow with the Global Development and Environment Institute. 20 years after the publication of Beyond Economic Man, she wrote the foreword to the anthology Counting on Marilyn Waring: New Advances in Feminist Economics.