Contact Information

• mmahoney@unca.edu
• 251-6672
• 157 Karpen Hall

Office Hours

• Wednesday 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
• Note: Office hours also available by appointment.

Melissa Mahoney is an economist specializing in the economics of well-being, public finance, and public K-12 education. She has conducted research in these areas in wide detail from Amartya Sen’s capability approach to economic development to the assessment of measured economic well-being of American households. She has worked at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College on their extended-income measure, the LIMEW. Most recently, her professional efforts focused on policy issues related to gender equality, economic vulnerability, human resilience and human development while working at the United Nations in New York.

Melissa holds a BA from Bard College where she studied economics and spiritual philosophy. She earned her MA (’05) and PhD (’11) in Economics from the New School for Social Research where she focused on political economy, labor economics, and public finance. Her dissertation explores equity in American public schools in historical, political and economic context by assessing gaps in spending across detailed demographic groups and how school spending, when incorporated into an extended income measure, interacts with other components of household income to affect the distribution of economic well-being across households with students.

She is also a practitioner of yoga asana and meditation, teaches both, reads and writes poetry, and has travelled extensively pursuing experiences that broaden her perception of what it means to live life well and with intention and compassion.