Petra E. Todd is the Alfred L. Cass Term Professor in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a fellow of the Econometric Society and a research associate of the National Bureau for Economic Research, IZA, and of the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Her main fields of research are labor economics, development economics, and microeconometrics. She has published papers on methodology for evaluating effects of social programs, modeling the determinants of cognitive achievement, testing for discrimination in motor vehicle searches, sources of racial wage disparities, and methods for evaluating and optimally designing conditional cash transfer programs. Many of her papers appear in leading journals, such as the American Economic Review, Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Political Economy, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. She is an associate editor for the AER and for the Journal of Human Capital. Todd is currently working on the projects related to (i) evaluating the effects of a large-scale randomized school incentive program in Mexican high schools, (ii) assessing the effects of government regulation on the operation of the privatized pension market in Chile, (iii) dynamic modeling of teacher labor supply in Chile under a large-scale school voucher system, and (iv) assessing the effects of recent pension reforms on labor supply and savings behavior in Chile. Her research is funded by grants from NIH, NSF, and the Spencer foundation. Todd also regularly does consulting projects work for the Population Council, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the Department of Labor, and the Mexican and Chilean governments. When not working, she enjoys ballroom dancing and boating in Maryland.

Todd received a B.A. in Economics and English from the University of Virginia in 1989, a M.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1991, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1996.