Susan Helper is the Carlton Professor of Economics at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. She was formerly chief economist at the U.S. Department of Commerce and a member of the White House staff. She has served as chair of the economics department and has been a visiting scholar at University of Oxford, the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a Research Associate at NBER and Co-Director of CIFAR’s Project on Innovation, Equity, and the Future of Prosperity.
Her research focuses on supply chain globalization, technology implementation that enhances job quality, and creation of supply chains for a low-carbon economy (see "Green Supply Chains Can Strengthen the Middle Class").
Her reports, Next Generation Supply Chains, “Supply Chains and Equitable Growth,” and “Value first, cost later: Total value contribution as a new approach to sourcing decisions,” focus on the globalization of supply chains and ways that U.S. manufacturing might be revitalized.
Dr. Helper received her PhD in Economics from Harvard and her BA from Oberlin College in Economics, Government, and Spanish.