Institute update: Honoring the legacy of Bill Spriggs

Over nearly four decades as a professional economist, Bill Spriggs made significant contributions to labor economics, economic policy, and the practice of economics research and training. At the time of his death in June 2023, he was in his sixth year as a member of the Institute's advisory board while also actively continuing his work as a labor economist, a public policy advisor, a professor of economics, an academic advisor, and a mentor.

To recognize Spriggs' many meaningful contributions and achievements, a program committee drawn from his professional connections organized three sessions at the Allied Social Science Associations annual meeting in January.

Institute Director Abigail Wozniak moderated a plenary luncheon to memorialize Spriggs' career and introduce his work to the next generation of economists. The panelists included several of Spriggs' oldest colleagues and students, people who knew him from interactions around specific policy issues, and people who knew him mainly through his academic example.

The panelists described Spriggs' distinctive approach to economics. Larry Mishel, who met Spriggs in 1977 in graduate school, recalled how Spriggs was the only Black graduate student in the University of Wisconsin economics department at the time and for years before and after. Spriggs was passionate about bringing his own lived experiences, his love of history, and his belief that institutions matter to his approach to economics.

"We thought of economics as if people mattered. We weren't interested in solving problems brought up by economics. We were interested in solving problems brought up by the economy, and those are two different things," Mishel said.

It was a perspective that policymakers found valuable. "His was a view that I wanted to get, because it was informed by experiences that most others didn't have," Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said. "It had a lot of solid economic reasoning behind it, and I found that uniquely valuable."

Kashkari and Spriggs used to speak about the trade-off between inflation and unemployment, a tension that resonates with today's economic environment. "Bill would say, 'We've got to avoid a recession because recessions are very, very painful for low-income communities and minority communities especially,'" Kashkari said.

As Spriggs' career developed, he expanded his contributions to many domains. These included research into drivers of labor market outcomes and economic disparities and the role of monetary policy in the labor market. Two paper sessions provided an opportunity to showcase new research in the Spriggs research and policy tradition.

The panelists admired Spriggs for how effortlessly he wore many hats. "He provided a model of an economist that I had not yet seen in the fact that he could successfully move between policy and academia," said Robynn Cox, economics professor at University of California, Riverside. "He had a tremendous impact on economic thought, policy, and in the profession through mentorship. He was a beacon of light for so many of us, and he's tremendously missed."

This article is featured in the Spring 2026 issue of For All, the magazine of the Opportunity & Inclusive Growth Institute