About the Tobin Center
The Tobin Center reduces the time from research to impact. By enabling more policy-relevant research at Yale and bringing it to the policy arena, we seek to strengthen families, communities and the nation.
Economics should be about something; it should make a difference to the well-being of our nation and the world. These are really the values that the Tobin Center stands for — the Center has been doing important research, and I think policy will benefit from that kind of data-driven approach that is really focused on real problems.
- U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
2023 YEAR IN REVIEW
In 2023, we made new contributions to US policy, expanded our research portfolio, and launched innovative new partnerships with peers and government.
Read our Annual Letter:
Recent advances in economics, data, and analytics present exciting and untapped opportunities to better understand and address modern policy challenges. Yale’s Tobin Center for Economic Policy is advancing research insights and innovations for impact by bringing them to the policy arena. We seek to achieve measurable advances on critical issues from health, education, and economic mobility to climate change, digital markets, and evidence-based policy.
Launched in 2019 and named for the late James Tobin, iconic faculty member and Nobel laureate, the Tobin Center is a core component of Yale’s university-wide strategy to advance data-driven social science that shapes and informs public policy. As a platform for national, non-partisan policy impact at Yale, the Tobin Center works to identify and scale effective, non-partisan, and practical policy solutions that strengthen families, communities, and the nation.
James Tobin
James Tobin, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize in economics, joined the faculty of the Yale Department of Economics in 1950 and was appointed Sterling Professor of Economics in 1957, remaining at Yale until his retirement in 1988 and death in 2002. During this career spanning over 50 years, Tobin established himself as a leader in the field through many outstanding contributions to economic theory. His fundamental concern, however, was how economic policies affected people’s lives. The Tobin Center for Economic Policy at Yale honors its namesake’s legacy by casting empirical light onto contemporary issues in domestic economic policy.
