Michael E. Martell

Mike Martell is an Associate Professor and Chair of Economics at Bard College. He graduated from the University of Oregon, in his home state, with a BA in Business Administration prior to completing his MA and PhD in economics at American University. Prior to Bard College, Martell previously taught at Franklin and Marshall College, Elizabethtown College, the University of Mary Washington, and American University.  He has professional experience as an economist in the Department of Labor.  He worked as an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Office of Occupational Safety and Health as well as at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.  At OSHA he worked in the Office of Regulatory Analysis before joining the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Safety and Health.

Martell’s research interests center around the economics of equity and inclusion.   He applies this interest primarily to LGBTQ+ individuals and has written about the causes, consequences, and potential remedies for inequalities experienced by sexual and gender minorities.  His research contributes to an understanding of unequal labor market outcomes, the impacts of equal rights laws (such as anti-discrimination and same-sex marriage laws), and the intrahousehold dynamics of LGBTQ+ individuals. His work has been supported by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the AU Innovative Research in Gender Economics program.  His teaching interests mirror the fields in which he publishes: labor and industrial relations, health and demographic economics, public policy, household and feminist economics as well as the economics of inequality and discrimination.  He regularly teaches classes in Labor, Health, Discrimination, and Introductory Theory at Bard.

Martell is a Fellow at the Global Labor Organization, Co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Economic Exploitation and Inequality, and a member of the inaugural American Economic Association Committee on the Status of LGBTQ+ Individuals in the Economics Profession (CSQIEP).  As part of his contributions to CSQIEP, he created and organizes the AEA CSQIEP Virtual Seminar on the Economics of LGBTQ+ Individuals.  

You can view his cv here and contact him at mmartell@bard.edu.