Russell Michael Weinstein

Russell Michael Weinstein is an Associate Professor in both the School of Labor and Employment Relations and the Department of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds a PhD from Boston University (2014) and is a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany since 2021. His research focuses on labor market frictions, employer recruiting strategies, and their impacts on worker mobility, human capital investments, and social mobility.

Key research areas include the effects of university selectivity on graduate outcomes, labor market dynamics during economic shocks, and the role of monitoring and discrimination in workplace productivity. His work bridges theory and empirical analysis, often using firm-level and regional data to explore topics like employer decision-making and economic resilience.

Publications span high-impact journals such as the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Economic Journal, and Review of Economics and Statistics. Notable studies include analyses of post-Great Recession income disparities among university alumni and the role of regional universities in enhancing local social mobility.

Teaching includes courses on labor economics, econometrics, and the gender wage gap. Current research projects investigate the impact of historically Black colleges and regional universities on social mobility, inter-industry talent competition, and teacher training programs' effects on education systems.