E. Bronson Ingram Professor, Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University
University Distinguished Professor with tenure in Economics and Health Policy, Vanderbilt University
Professor by courtesy in Peabody College of Education; Vanderbilt Law School; and the Departments of Gender and Sexuality Studies and Medicine, Health, and Society
Founding Director, Vanderbilt Center for Research on Inequality and Health, part of the Provost's Discovery Vanderbilt
Founding Director and Associate Director, Vanderbilt LGBTQ+ Policy Lab, one of Vanderbilt's Trans-Institutional Programs
Co-Founder and Co-Chair, AEA CSQIEP
Co-Director, Economics of Health Program, NBER
Elected Member, National Academy of Medicine
Past President, APPAM
Research interests: health economics, public policy, labor economics, economic demography, LGBTQ+ populations.
Selected recent papers:
Transgender Earnings Gaps: Evidence from Administrative Data (with Lucas Goodman and Maxine Lee), revise and resubmit, American Economic Review
Nonbinary and Transgender Identities and Earnings: Evidence from a National Census (with Donn Feir, Krishna Pendakur, and Casey Warman), forthcoming, American Economic Review: Insights
Sexual Orientation and Financial Well-Being: Evidence from SHED (with Kabir Dasgupta, Zofsha Merchant, and Alexander Plum), forthcoming, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Sexual Orientation and Multiple Job-Holding: Evidence from Swedish Administrative Data (with Erwan Dujeancourt, Samuel Mann, and Lucia Naldi), forthcoming, Journal of Human Resources
Understanding Labor Market Discrimination Against Transgender People: Evidence from a Double List Experiment and a Survey (with Billur Aksoy an Dario Sansone), (2024) Management Science
A Review of the Economics of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (with Lee Badgett, Maxine Lee, and Dario Sansone), (2024) Journal of Economic Literature
A Review of the Effects of Legal Access to Same-Sex Marriage (with Lee Badgett, Maxine Lee, and Dario Sansone), (2024) Journal of Policy Analysis and Management
LGBTQ+ Economics (with Lee Badgett and Dario Sansone), (2021) Journal of Economic Perspectives
My faculty page at Vanderbilt University is here.
My Google Scholar profile is here.
My cv is here.
You can contact me by email.
Brief bio:
Christopher (‘Kitt’) Carpenter is the E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Research Fellow at IZA Institute of Labor Economics. He is also University Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt with tenure in both the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Science and the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. At Vanderbilt, Carpenter holds courtesy appointments in Law; Education; the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society; and the Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies. Carpenter is founding Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Research on Inequality and Health. Carpenter is also Founding Director and Associate Director of the Vanderbilt LGBTQ+ Policy Lab, Co-founder and Co-Chair of the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of LGBTQ+ Individuals in the Economics Profession, Past-President of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, Co-Director of the Economics of Health Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and an Elected Member of the National Academy of Medicine. He was an Editor at the Journal of Health Economics from 2018-2024 and is an Associate Editor at the American Journal of Health Economics and a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management and the Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. He studies the causes and consequences of risky and preventive health behaviors, especially the role of public health policies, as well as LGBTQ+ issues in economics and demography. His research has appeared/will appear in: American Economic Review: Insights; Journal of Economic Literature; Journal of Economic Perspectives; American Economic Journal: Applied Economics; American Economic Journal: Economic Policy; Review of Economics and Statistics; Demography; Journal of Policy Analysis and Management; PLOS One; and others. His research has been continuously supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIA, NIAAA, NICHD, NIMH, NIMHD), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the American Cancer Society. Carpenter earned a BA in math, economics, and public service from Albion College in Michigan in 1997 and a PhD in economics from UC Berkeley in 2002. He held positions at the University of Michigan (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Postdoctoral Scholar in Health Policy) and the University of California at Irvine (Assistant and Associate Professor) prior to joining Vanderbilt in 2013.