Michael Strain
Professor of the Practice
Michael R. Strain is Professor of Practice in the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. An economist, Professor Strain’s research and writing is in a wide range of areas, including labor markets, public finance, social policy, and macroeconomics. He has published widely in academic and policy journals and is the editor or coeditor of four books on economics and public policy. He is the author of The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It), which studies longer-term economic outcomes for typical workers and households and challenges the narrative of pessimism presented by populists in both political parties. He is concurrently Director of Economic Policy Studies and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he holds the Paul F. Oreffice Chair. Professor Strain is also a research fellow at the IZA Institute for Labor Economics and a research affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
In addition to research, he also writes frequently for popular audiences. He is a contributing columnist for the Financial Times, and his essays and op-eds have been published by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Project Syndicate, and National Review, among others. A frequent guest on radio and television, Dr. Strain is regularly interviewed by broadcast news networks, including CNBC, MSNBC, and NPR. He has testified before Congress, having appeared as an expert witness before six House and Senate committees, and speaks often to a variety of business, nonprofit, policy, and academic audiences.
Professor Strain is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Economic Strategy Group, and the National Academy of Social Insurance. Before joining AEI and the McCourt School, he worked in the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau and in the macroeconomics research group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell.