Prof. Deborah Cobb-Clark

Youth Transitions

Deborah Cobb-Clark is passionate about preventing poor children from becoming poor adults. Her research centres on building psychological concepts (locus of control, self-control, risk attitudes) into economic models of family decision-making. She studies the way that poverty affects the attention (cognitive capacity) parents have available; the role of depression, risk attitudes, and welfare receipt in risk-taking behaviour; the role of locus of control and self-control in human capital formation; and the link between parents’ self-control and children’s outcomes.

While at CES, Ms. Cobb-Clark will work on two projects on self-control. The first seeks to understand self-control through the lens of problematic gambling. The second examines the behavioural foundations of self-control using both laboratory and survey-based measures.

Deborah Cobb-Clark AO FASSA is Professor of Economics at the University of Sydney, an Officer of the Order of Australia, and an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. She is Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families Over the Life Course, a national, multi-disciplinary research centre devoted to eliminating deep and persistent disadvantage. She is also director of the Program in Gender and Families at the Institute for the Study of Labor, IZA. Deborah Cobb-Clark graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Michigan State University, in 1983. In 1986, she received her Master of Arts in Economics as well as a PhD in Economics in 1990 both from the University of Michigan.