Lowell Taylor is a Senior Fellow in NORC’s Economic, Labor, and Population Studies department and has been on the Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz School faculty since 1990. He is currently the H. John Heinz III Professor of Economics and the Academic Director of the Center for Economic Development. He served as Director of the Heinz School Ph.D. Program from 2000 to 2002 and as Associate Dean for Faculty from 2002 to 2005. Prior to coming to Carnegie Mellon University, he taught in the economics departments at Miami University and the University of Texas at Austin. In 2000, he worked as Senior Economist for President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. Taylor has twice received the Heinz School’s top award for teaching excellence (1994, 2004). In 2004, he was the recipient (with Martin Gaynor and James Rebitzer) of the Eleventh Annual Health Care Research Award from the National Institute for Health Care Management, awarded for “excellence in original and creative health care research.
Taylor's general research interests are labor markets, economic incentives within firms, and economic demography. His papers span a wide range of topics, including the economic impact of minimum wage policy, the causes of racial disparity in U.S. labor markets, the economics of gay and lesbian families, and the nature of physician incentives in health maintenance organizations. His work has appeared in leading economics journals including the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics and Journal of Political Economy, and also in flagship journals in statistics and demography.