“Economics is relevant for everyone, in just about every situation,” says Donna Gilleskie, who has been a Carolina economics faculty member for 30 years.
In an interview, Donna Gilleskie acknowledged, right up front, that she would end up talking “like an economist.” And, well, she should.
Gilleskie is a 30-year member of UNC’s department of economics. She is an award-winning teacher and mentor, has served on the editorial boards of leading economics journals in her research field and is a current distinguished fellow and former president of the Southern Economic Association. She became interested in economics, however, as a teenager.
Gilleskie remembers discussing the Reagan-era economy nightly over dinner, and economics was a course that her father insisted that she take in high school. She would eventually double major in economics and mathematics at Carolina (’89), the alma mater of both of her parents.
Gilleskie admitted to not making good decisions her first semester of college. “Granted, my choices were optimal for me at the time, mostly because I wasn’t thinking past the next day,” she said. “I wasn’t solving a very well-informed optimization problem. Thankfully, I realized quickly that I needed to make choices that were going to have positive impacts long term.”
Once Gilleskie settled in, she couldn’t get enough economics, taking 13 courses in all. She went on to pursue a doctorate in economics at the University of Minnesota. As a newly minted Ph.D., she received several job offers, one of which was at Carolina.
“I made the optimal decision then, which was to come to Carolina, and I haven’t regretted it,” she said. “It was the right place for me to start my career, but it has also been a great place to carry out my career for the past 30 years. I’ve never doubted that decision.”
“The study of economics is not limited to forecasting market trends or following macroeconomic indicators,” Gilleskie added. “Economists often think about disparities and inequality. We think about incentives, about policy. The theories that we develop and the tools that we use can be applied to most aspects of decision making. Economics is relevant for everyone, in just about every situation.”
While her research and teaching interests include elements of labor economics and applied econometrics, much of Gilleskie’s work seeks to understand the economic behavior of individuals as it relates to their health, and vice versa. This pursuit involves modeling how policy and incentives might influence someone’s decision making over time. Health plays a role in many decisions a person encounters in life: daily choices about how to spend one’s time, what job to pursue, whether to get married and more.
Having spent five-and-a-half years serving as chair (and interim chair) of the department, Gilleskie’s term ended in June. She is now re-engaging with her research, teaching and mentoring. She is teaching a graduate course this fall and then taking a year-long research leave. A current research project examines the appointment adherence of adolescents and young adults with chronic kidney disease and the effects of these behaviors on kidney function trajectory. As a Carolina Population Center fellow, her research includes studying the impact of pre-pregnancy health on birth outcomes and the role of parents in child health and development. (Gilleskie added that she was recently promoted to “Grandma,” a new title and role that she excitedly embraces.)
The example of a first-semester student navigating the many alternatives before them with different costs and uncertain returns is illustrative of Gilleskie’s chosen field of study.
“Looking back on decision-making times in my past, if I could relive them, my optimal choice might be different, but that’s because the way I would frame my optimization problem would be different,” she said. “Understanding how people conceive of the things that impact their decision making — preferences, constraints and expectations — is what I love about economics.”
By Claire Cusick