Elizabeth (Beth) Dhuey is a Full Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto, with a primary appointment in the Department of Management at UTSC and graduate appointment at OISE. She holds cross-appointments across several policy and social science units, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of her research. Her academic affiliations span the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, the Department of Economics, and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation.
Professor Dhuey’s research focuses on the design, delivery, and evaluation of education systems. Her work is concentrated in three areas:
- Early childhood development and education policy,
- The structure and financing of special education systems, and
- Education and workforce development in the context of a rapidly changing labour market.
Using large-scale administrative datasets and advanced quasi-experimental methods, she explores how institutional design, resource allocation, and policy interventions shape educational and economic outcomes. Her empirical strategies often rely on high-dimensional microdata, placing her work at the forefront of computational approaches to public policy analysis.
Her work has been published in top-tier journals in both economics and education, and it has influenced broader public conversations, having been featured in The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, and 60 Minutes, and cited in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.
Professor Dhuey has also played a leadership role in the Canadian economics profession, serving as the inaugural Chair of the Canadian Women Economists Committee. She is Co-Director of the Equity in Education Canada research lab and was Academic Director of the Research Initiative on Education + Skills, where she led collaborative, data-driven studies to inform equitable, effective education policy.