Elizabeth Bailey

Elizabeth Ellery Bailey ( Raymond; November 26, 1938 – August 19, 2022) was an American economist. She was the John C. Hower Professor of Business and Public Policy, at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Bailey studied deregulation, market competition and regulatory capture through her career and contributed to the deregulation of the airline industry in the United States in the late 1970s. Bailey was the first woman to graduate with a PhD in economics from Princeton University and was considered a "pathbreaker for women in economics". Early life Bailey was born on November 26, 1938, in New York City to Henrietta Dana Raymond and Irving W. Raymond, both of whom were history professors. She was the second of five daughters in the family. She grew up in New York City, where she graduated from the Chapin School in 1956. She received her bachelor's degree from Radcliffe College, a master's degree from Stevens Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. from Princeton University, where she was the first woman to receive a doctoral degree in economics. Career Bailey started her career working as a computer programmer at Bell Laboratories. Bailey worked in technical programming at Bell Laboratories from 1960 to 1972, before transferring to the economic research section from 1972 to 1977. She was the first woman appointed a department head (the economic research section) at Bell Laboratories. During her time there, she was part of a group that studied monopolies and regulatory distortions, and even gave presentations on the topic to AT&T executives and advisors including William Baumol and Alfred E. Kahn, with whom she would later go on to collaborate.