Research

My research primarily uses big data to study public policy, human behavior, and social phenomena. I primarily focus on three areas: dynamics of the high skilled scientific workforce, improvements to measures of poverty and inequality, and gender economics. I used program evaluation techniques to examine the impact of major federal training programs in science,  study the effect of child labor reduction programs on schooling, and identify the impact of divorce legalization on children's schooling and women's labor force participation. Below are examples of my work on the scientific workforce. For a full list of publications and current research, see CV.

Azoulay, Pierre, Wesley H. Greenblatt, and Misty L. Heggeness, 2021, “Long-Term Effects from Early Exposure to Research: Evidence from the NIH Yellow Berets,” Research Policy. [NBER Preprint]

Donna K. Ginther, and Misty L. Heggeness, 2020, “Administrative Discretion in Scientific Funding: Evidence from a Prestigious Postdoctoral Training Program,” Research Policy, 49(4), 103953. [NBER Preprint]

Heggeness, Misty L.;  Gunsalus, Kearney T.; Pacas, Jose and McDowell, Gary, 2017, "The New Face of U.S. Science," Nature, 541(7635), pp. 21-23.

Heggeness, Misty L.; Evans, Lisa; Pohlhaus, Jennifer R. and Mills, Sherry L., 2016, "Measuring Diversity of the National Institutes of Health-Funded Workforce," Academic Medicine, 91(8), pp. 1164-1172.

Heggeness, Misty L.; Carter-Johnson, Frances; Schaffer, Walter T. and Rockey, Sally J., 2016, "Policy Implications of Aging in the National Institutes of Health-Funded Workforce." Cell Stem Cell, 19(1), pp. 15-18.