Pauline Carry, an assistant professor of economics and international affairs, is a labor economist and a macroeconomist. Her research focuses on how employment contracts are formed and terminated, and the effects of labor-market institutions aimed at regulating those contracts.

Carry has studied the impact of introducing a legal minimum working time of 24 hours per week in France, where she grew up. Before joining Princeton University, she was a Saieh Postdoctoral Fellow at the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago.

Here’s more about her, in her own words:

My research explores… the intersection of labor economics and macroeconomics. I am interested in the effects of labor-market regulations on workers, firms, and unemployment.

An employment contract is characterized by various dimensions, such as the wage, the number of hours of work, and the job duration. I have been working on understanding the effects of labor-market institutions aiming as regulation those different components. For instance, what is the effect of working time regulations, or of employment protection?

In recent work, I have been focusing on how those employment contract characteristics are determined. As an example, to what extent is the number of hours worked bargained with workers or chosen by the employer? Developing our knowledge of how employers and workers behave and interact in the labor market is crucial to understanding aggregate labor-market evidence. It is also important to understand how labor-market policies impact the economy.

At Princeton SPIA, I’m most excited about… discussions with the students. Princeton SPIA students come with various and rich experiences in institutions or from the policy side. My research on labor-market policies involves a lot of back and forth between understanding the objectives and constraints of policymakers and incorporating those considerations in economic models. Interactions with colleagues from various academic backgrounds and students at Princeton SPIA are a fantastic opportunity to be exposed to different views of the policy-making process, beyond the trade-offs that economists usually have in mind.

While here, I want to… interact as much as possible with colleagues of various disciplines and integrate different views in my work. My research, while relying on the tools of economics, spans topics from other social sciences. My work often involves discussions with experts in labor law, human resources, and policy. Princeton SPIA is a fantastic environment to foster those interactions.

My greatest influence in life has been… my partner, who is an incredibly inspiring person and teaches me a lot. He is passionate about economics and policy, and our discussions shape many aspects in my work.

On an evening off, you’ll most likely find me… trying to cook a new recipe, and making cocktails!