Mary Hansen

Mary Eschelbach Hansen is Associate Professor and in the Economics Department at American University in Washington, D.C. Since earning her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993, she has published widely in the fields economic history and child welfare policy. At the heart of Hansen’s contributions to these fields is her creative re-purposing of records, originally collected by governments for administrative uses, for economic research. Also unifying her research is a sensitivity to how local environments, such as those created by state law and policy, enhance or retard the effectiveness of federal regulation. For example, her recent work on bankruptcy during the 1920s and 1930s highlights the need to account for how state debtor-credit law, especially garnishment law, mediates the use of the single federal bankruptcy law by households.