MDRC President Gordon Berlin recently announced that Charles Michalopoulos has been named MDRC’s Chief Economist. In this role, he will be responsible for ensuring that MDRC’s quantitative methods and analysis strategies meet the highest standards.

Michalopoulos, who joined MDRC in 1997, is an expert on experimental and nonexperimental statistical methods and on social policies for more disadvantaged groups. Since joining MDRC, he has led the impact analysis on a number of MDRC evaluations over the past 15 years, including studies of financial work incentives for welfare recipients, mandatory welfare-to-work programs, child care subsidy policies, and programs that aim to strengthen the marriages of low-income couples. His most recent work focuses on MDRC’s growing agenda related to health — he is co-principal investigator on a national evaluation of home visiting programs for disadvantaged mothers funded and authorized by the federal health care legislation, is leading two MDRC evaluations of coordinated care for high-cost Medicaid recipients, and is conducting an impact analysis of care management for depressed Medicaid recipients in Rhode Island. He was also co-principal investigator for the Accelerated Benefits Demonstration, an evaluation of the effects of offering health care coverage to new uninsured recipients of Disability Insurance benefits.

Michalopoulos earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1994 and was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Virginia Tech.