Susan Helper

Susan Helper, PhD, is the Frank Tracy Carlton Professor of Economics at Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. She served as the Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Commerce from 2013-2015, and as Senior Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisors in 2012-2013.

Her research focuses on this question: When supplies and customers or management and labor collaborate, how does it shape the economy? Currently, she is looking at how global supply chains affect regional development and innovation. She is also examining a paradox in regional economic development. While the world is becoming more “flat” with goods and money flowing ever more quickly around the globe, local “clusters" of production in places such as Silicon Valley remain important. Helper has numerous publications in refereed journals such as Journal of Economic Perspectives, Industrial and Corporate Change, American Economic Review, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, and Industrial and Corporate Change. She is a member of the editorial review board for Strategic Management Journal.

Since her appointment to Case Western Reserve University in 1990, Helper has taught students at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels. Her courses include Environmental Economics, Research Methods, Economics of Innovation, Competition and Public Policy, Economics of Cooperation, Introduction to Microeconomics, and Principles of Economics Perspectives on Management Theory.

Over the past ten years, she has served as chair of the Case Western Reserve Economics Department and the AT&T Professor of Economics; International Visiting Fellow at Said School of Management, University of Oxford; and Visiting Scholar, Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California, Berkeley. She received her PhD from Harvard University and her BA from Oberlin College.

Initially Appointed: 1990

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