Experts and Staff

Julie Cai is an economist on the domestic team at CEPR, where she works on a variety of issues relating to labor market conditions, racial and gender disparities, economic well-being, poverty, and social policy.

In addition to the work in support of CEPR’s domestic program, Cai conducts research for academic publications in the fields of economic instability, social policy, the welfare state, and child protection. Previously, she was a graduate research fellow with the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP), contributing to reports for the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families; a member of the Columbia’s Poverty Tracker project, and a member of a joint research team between UNICEF and the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Cross-National Data Center. She occasionally teaches a course on research methods for social policy track students at Columbia University.

Cai earned her PhD in social welfare with a minor in public affairs from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2021. She is an affiliated researcher with the Columbia University Center on Poverty and Social Policy. As of 2022, she is a visiting fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.