Faculty
Emeriti

Shirley Johnson-Lans, PhD

Professor Emerita of Economics
(1967–2014)

Educational Background: Radcliffe College, BA, magna cum laude (philosophy), 1956; the University of Edinburgh, MA, 1st class honors and gold medalist, 1958, which I attended on a Marshall Scholarship; PhD (economics) Columbia University., 1966.

I joined the Vassar College Economics Department as an Associate Professor in Fall, 1967, and was a Professor in the department until I retired in January 2014. I served four terms as department chair.

After retirement, I continued to teach one seminar course as an adjunct through 2019. My main research areas are labor markets and health economics, I am the author of two books, A Health Care Economics Primer (2005) and Wage Inequality in Africa (2017), and many scholarly articles. My main teaching areas were micro-economic theory, labor economics, health care economics, history of economic thought, and comparative economics.

I am the co-editor of the Palgrave/Macmillan book series, Global Perspectives on Wealth and Distribution, and author of a forthcoming volume in that series, Economic Effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic: An International Perspective. I have served on the boards of the Mortgage Agency of the State of New York, the New York State Energy Research Development Authority, have been president of the International Economics Honor Society, ODE (Omicron Delta Epsilon), and the Harvard Radcliffe Club of the Hudson Valley, and a member of the Economic Justice Task Force of the Episcopal Diocese of New York.

I still maintain a small office in the Economics Department, Blodgett Hall, and enjoy participating in departmental seminars, swimming in the Vassar Pool, and attending lectures and performances on campus.

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