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Dr. Stephen Barnes is the Director of the Kathleen Babineaux Blanco Public Policy Center at the �������Ƶ and an Associate Professor of economics in the B.I. Moody III College of Business Administration.

Dr. Barnes also serves as the independent economist on the Louisiana Revenue Estimating Conference, a forecasting panel that sets income projections used to create the state budget. He has collaborated with federal and state agencies, industry partners and advocacy groups as well as scholars in more than a dozen disciplines on research addressing many aspects of the economy and population of Louisiana.

Dr. Barnes has publications spanning the economics of education, environmental risks, health and health care, and transportation. Dr. Barnes holds a BS in economics from LSU and an MS and PhD in economics from the University of Texas at Austin.

Ph.D. Economics,
University of Texas at Austin 2008 
Fields: Public, Labor, Econometrics

M.S. Economics, University of Texas at Austin 2004 

B.S. Economics, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA 2002 

Dr. Barnes's research interests are in:

• Public economic
• Labor economics
• Tax policy
• Health economics
• Environmental economics
• Applied econometrics

Opportunities for Student Research/Collaboration:

Dr. Barnes is always hiring students to work on Blanco Center research projects.

• “Staying Out of Trouble? Effect of High School Career Counseling on Crime,” Economics of Education Review, forthcoming, with Louis-Philippe Beland, Swarup Joshi, and Barton Willage
• “We Don’t Want Your Water: Broadening Community Understandings of and Engagement in Flood Risk and Mitigation,” Frontiers in Water, forthcoming, with Liz Skilton, Anna C Osland, Emma Willis, Emad H Habib, Mohamed ElSaadani, Brian Miles and Trung Quang Do
• “COVID-19 Lockdown and Traffic Accidents: Lessons from the Pandemic,” Contemporary Economic Policy, 2022, 40(2): 349-368, with Louis-Philippe Beland, Jason Huh, and Dongwoo Kim
• “Is Medicaid misreporting stable over time? Self‑reported health insurance coverage of Medicaid recipients in Louisiana, 2007–2017,” Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10742-021-00262-8, with Kirby Goidel, Dek Terrell and Stephanie Virgets.
• “Impact of a Low Cost Post-Secondary Enrollment Intervention: Evidence from Louisiana,” Education Finance and Policy, 2021, 16(3): 493-515, with Swarup Joshi.
• “Test Based Promotion Policies, Dropping Out and Juvenile Crime,” Journal of Public Economics, 2017, 153: 9-31, with Briggs Depew and Ozkan Eren.
• “Economic Evaluation of Coastal Land Loss in Louisiana,” Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics, 2017, 4(1), with Craig Bond, Nicholas Burger, Kate Anania, Aaron Strong, Sarah Weilant, and Stephanie Virgets.
• “Federal Subsidization and State Medicaid Provision,” Review of Economic Dynamics, July 2016, 21: 29-45, with Jorge Barro.
• “Understanding Congestion in China’s Medical Market: An Incentive Structure Perspective,” Health Policy and Planning, April 2016, 31(3): 390-403, with Zesheng Sun and Shuhong Wang.
• “Economic and Policy Issues in Sustaining an Adequate Oil Spill Contingency Fund in the Aftermath of a Catastrophic Incident.” Proceedings of the 37th AMOP Technical Conference on Environmental Contamination and Response, 2014, with David Dismukes and Greg Upton
• “The Impact of the Labor Market on Health Insurance,” Journal of Labor Research, Fall 2009, 328-39, with Dek Terrell.