Lea Rendell joined Kenyon’s Department of Economics in 2025 after completing her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland. Her research examines how financial constraints affect business formation and explores the role of government policy in supporting entrepreneurial ventures. She is also interested in labor economics, particularly the measurement of and changes in labor supply in the post-pandemic era.

Rendell brings policy experience from multiple roles in the federal government. During the 2023-2024 academic year, she served as a staff economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. While completing her Ph.D., she worked as an economist at the U.S. Census Bureau. Prior to graduate school, she was a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 2015 to 2017.

Areas of Expertise

Entrepreneurship, macroeconomics, labor, economics of education

Education

2025 — Doctor of Philosophy from University of Maryland

2020 — Master of Arts from University of Maryland

2015 — Bachelor of Arts from Vassar College, Phi Beta Kappa

Courses Recently Taught

This course studies national economic performance. Building upon the microeconomic theories of consumer and producer behavior developed in ECON 101, the course introduces models that focus on the questions of unemployment, inflation and growth. Topics covered include measurement of national income and inflation, macroeconomic models, saving and investment, money and banking, fiscal and monetary policy, and international trade and finance. This course is required for the major. Prerequisite: ECON 101. Offered every spring semester.

This course introduces students to perspectives and methods used in the economics of education. Students critically survey the research frontier in economics on policies and practices used to promote learning and bridge achievement gaps in the United States. Topics include education inequality, the role of schools, teachers, and policies in raising student achievement, education finance, and increasing access to higher education. The course emphasizes students’ ability to distinguish causal evidence from anecdotal/correlational evidence and to make predictions about the potential impacts of education reform. This counts as an elective for the major. Prerequisite: ECON101. Generally offered every year in the fall semester.

This seminar uses economic theory and empirical analysis to examine both the role of education in the economy and current educational policy debates. The seminar reviews the basic theory of investments in education (human capital theory) and investigates the empirical problem of disentangling the impact of education on earnings from the impact of innate ability as well as the association between education and individual earnings and why that relationship has changed over time. The seminar also examines the role of early childhood education, the main approaches to K-12 school reform and the issues of cost and access to higher education. Each student writes and presents a seminar paper. This counts toward the seminar requirement for the major. Prerequisite: ECON 101 and 102. Generally offered every other year.