A native of Belgium, Bertrand grew up helping her parents sell fish and poultry in their small shop -- an experience that gave her a sense of “what hard work is really about,” she said during an interview in her office at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, where she is a professor. Her interest in labor markets was sparked in part by growing up in Europe, where she saw persistently high unemployment, especially among young people.

She entered the Universite Libre de Bruxelles intending to become a journalist. On the advice of an economics professor she considers a mentor, she switched majors, partly because “I love trying to understand the data,” and economics seemed to offer the opportunity for “detective work similar to investigative journalism.” Her mentor also encouraged her to go to Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for her doctorate, which she received in 1998.

‘Risky Strategy’

While many economists make a mark by focusing on a particular area -- monetary policy or financial regulation, for example -- Bertrand says she’s adopted an initially “risky strategy” by addressing social topics that interest her. Hiring bias has been a particular focus, though most practices today are more subtle than “old-school discrimination” which is illegal, she said.

In one field experiment, she and Harvard economics professor Sendhil Mullainathan sent fictitious responses to 1,300 help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. Using similar resumes, they randomly assigned names that were black- sounding, such as Lakisha and Jamal, or white-sounding, such as Greg and Emily. Letters with “white” names received 50 percent more callbacks -- a result she and Mullainathan described in a paper.

Their findings were “disturbing” and hard to dispute because they submitted almost 5,000 applications over a year, Alan Krueger, former chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in a New York Times commentary.

Equal-Opportunity Laws

The experiment showed the importance of equal-opportunity laws, said Ariane Hegewisch, study director for the Washington- based Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “The research on discrimination in recruitment” is “very helpful when confronted with skeptics who believe that there no longer is a need for active enforcement of equality of opportunity.”

Increased regulation also could help consumers make more informed decisions on so-called payday lending, which provides $500 or smaller loans meant to tide the borrower over until the next paycheck, Bertrand said, citing an experiment she conducted with Adair Morse, an associate professor of finance at the Booth School, where Bertrand has worked since 2000.

Customers of an unidentified lender were given various summaries of the costs of loans. Information in dollars -- as opposed to interest rates -- reduced borrowing and was the most effective message, their surveys found. Bertrand said the experiment could be duplicated by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the Dodd-Frank overhaul of financial regulation.