Yana Gallen is a labor economist specializing in gender-based wage disparities and the impact of family policies on the labor market. Professor Gallen’s expertise centers on the roles that productivity, parenthood, alleged discrimination, and individual preferences play in workplace benefits and nonmonetary compensation. She has extensive experience analyzing large datasets linking employees and firms using administrative data in the U.S., Denmark, and Sweden. Professor Gallen has also conducted a large field experiment in the U.S.
Professor Gallen researches the effects of parental leave on firms and workers, as well as the interplay between job characteristics, career development, and gender pay gaps. Using linked health and labor market data from Sweden and Denmark, she has studied productivity gaps and has analyzed labor market returns for women who delay pregnancy.
Professor Gallen has published articles in leading economics journals, including the Journal of the European Economic Association, the Journal of Public Economics, and Labour Economics. She is also a research associate at the IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. Professor Gallen speaks regularly at academic and professional conferences and has presented to the Federal Reserves in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, as well as universities across the United States and in Scandinavia.
At the Harris School of Public Policy, Professor Gallen teaches courses on microeconomics and a course on policy and the economics of work.