Helen F. Ladd

Sanford Institute of Public Policy
Duke University

About the Author

Helen F. Ladd is a Professor of Public Policy Studies and Economics at Duke University and also Director of Graduate Studies in Public Policy. She earned her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and taught at Harvards Kennedy School of Government before moving to Duke in 1986. Much of her current research focuses on education policy, particularly performance-based approaches to reforming schools. She is the editor of Holding Schools Accountable: Performance-Based Reform in Education (Brookings Institution, 1996). She currently co-chairs the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Education Finance; Equity, Adequacy, and Productivity.

An expert on state and local public finance, Professor Ladd has written extensively on the property tax, education finance, tax and expenditure limitations, intergovernmental aid, state economic development, and the fiscal problems of U.S. cities. In addition, she has coauthored books on discrimination in mortgage lending and the capitalization of property taxes and edited a volume on tax and expenditure limitations. She has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a senior research fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.