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Charles Becker

Contact Information
Department of Economics
213 Social Sciences Building
Duke University
Box 90097
Durham, NC 27708-0097

Phone: (919) 660-1885
Email: cbecker@econ.duke.edu
Office: 138 Social Sciences Building

Charles Becker photo

Curriculum Vitae

Research

Teaching


Brief Biographical Sketch
Professor Becker joined the Duke faculty in 2003, where he directed the American Economic Association's Summer Program and Minority Scholarship Program (2003-2007). He previously directed this program at the University of Colorado at Denver. Becker earned his PhD at Princeton University and was an undergraduate at Grinnell College. He previously taught at Vanderbilt University and at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he directed the Economics Institute from 1990-96. In 1998-99, Becker served as Team Leader for the Asian Development Bank's pension reform project in Kyrgyzstan; from 1999-2006 he served as an advisor to the Kazakhstan government on its pension reform program.

Becker's research interests include social security system forecasting, the economics of transition economies, economic demography, CGE modeling, and urban economics. He has written books on social security reform in Kazakhstan, urbanization in India and in sub-Saharan Africa, the impact of sanctions in South Africa and neighboring countries, and a computable general equilibrium simulation model of India. Ongoing projects concern reassessing infant mortality rates, the graying of poverty in developing countries, migration and demographic change in the former USSR, accidental death and disability in middle-income countries, and progression to and performance in Economics doctoral programs by minority students.