
Professor of Economics
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Dr. Jane Cooley Fruehwirth is a Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, a fellow of UNC’s Carolina Population Center, and adjunct professor in Public Policy. She is a Research Associate of NBER’s Economics of Education Working Group, an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty and the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group and the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility.
Dr. Cooley Fruehwirth worked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Cambridge, prior to joining UNC. She specializes in the economics of education and social economics. Her research considers the role of peer effects in exacerbating inequality in student outcomes and how peers can be exploited to improve student outcomes. She has also studied the interplay of teachers and peers, considering how teaching strategies may be more effective with classrooms with certain types of students. She has also studied social determinants of mental health and resilience in adolescence and young adulthood, considering the effects of religiosity, social media and the pandemic. Most recently she is partnering with colleagues in the NC Department of Public Instruction to study teacher retention and key protective factors in the face of increased student needs, such as multi-tiered systems of support, counselors and intensive school level mental health interventions (Project AWARE).