College Park, MD--9/9/2013--Dr. Barbara Morgan, currently a senior lecturer and undergraduate advisor in the Department of Economics at Johns Hopkins University, will be giving a presentation on the key methodologies economists, sociologists and lawyers use to demonstrate whether or not discrimination exists in the labor market.  Among the methodologies covered will be wage equations, natural experiments and audit studies. Dr. Morgan will be giving this presentation at Noon on Wednesday, September 25^th at Optimal Solutions Group, LLC (Optimal’s) office in M Square Research Park, Maryland.

Dr. Morgan has taught courses in labor economics and public policy for forty years. A continuing focus of her teaching and research has been on the employment relationship – in other words in the overall distribution of compensation and benefits in the economy, job stability, risk of workplace injury, flexibility of hours and the many types of government policies that influence these outcomes.  Dr. Morgan’s research and consulting experience includes topics such as the economic impact of unions, contingent labor, incentives in workers’ compensation programs, and the economics of discrimination. She holds a Masters degree from Cambridge University, England and a Ph.D in Economics from Florida State University.

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Optimal Solutions Group, LLC

Founded in 2000, Optimal Solutions Group, LLC is a nonpartisan public policy research and technical assistance firm that stands out for its quantitative expertise and innovative approaches to provide rigorous, data-driven research and technical assistance to government agencies, corporations, nonprofit organizations, and philanthropic foundations. Located at the University of Maryland’s M Square Research Park in College Park, Optimal is a leader in driving real-time public policy research. Optimal has 60+ employees, including multidisciplinary researchers with backgrounds in business, communication, economics, education, health policy, psychology, public policy, sociology, statistics, and urban planning. Optimal has four research centers: Health, Education, Housing, and Workforce Development and Social Policy.