Lesley J. Turner

Associate Professor of Economics

Lesley J. Turner is an Associate Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University, faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and CESifo research affiliate. Her research broadly considers the roles that government should play in providing and financing education. Recent projects examine how incentives built into the structure of higher education financing affect students and colleges, and the implications these responses have for students’ educational outcomes, loan debt, and labor market outcomes. Her work on K–12 education policy has examined the impact of school accountability measures on student achievement, of incentive pay for teachers on student achievement and teacher effort, and of school and classroom gender composition on student achievement. Dr. Turner graduated from a joint BA/MPP program at the University of Michigan in 2005, received her PhD in Economics from Columbia University in 2012, and was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland from 2012 to 2019 (receiving tenure in 2019).