Left the university in 2011
Professor of Public Affairs
Faculty Affiliate, Department of Economics
Office: 109 Observatory Hill Office Building
Phone: 608 262-5443
Fax: 608 265-3233
E-mail:
Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs
University of Wisconsin - Madison
1225 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706-1211
Carolyn Heinrich served as director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs from 2008 to 2011. She was professor of public affairs and affiliated professor of economics, and a Regina Loughlin Scholar. Her research focuses on social welfare policy, public management and performance management, and econometric methods for social-program evaluation. She works directly in her research with governments at all levels, including with the federal government on evaluations of workforce development programs, with states on their social welfare and child support programs, school districts in the evaluation of supplemental educational services and other educational interventions, and governments such as Brazil and South Africa on their social and human capital development programs. Other ongoing projects involve the study of labor market intermediaries and labor market outcomes for low-skilled and disadvantaged workers, health-care reform provisions, policy factors that support effective provision of substance abuse treatment services, and conditional cash transfers and related poverty-reduction interventions.
Professor Heinrich co-edited the book, Making the Work-Based Safety Net Work Better: Forward-Looking Policies to Help Low-Income Families (Russell Sage Foundation, 2009) with John Karl Scholz. She is also a co-author of several books on the empirical study of governance and public management, including Improving Governance: A New Logic for Empirical Research and Governance and Performance: New Perspectives. Recent articles have appeared in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Health Services Research, Southern Economic Journal, World Development, Journal of Labor Economics, The American Review of Public Administration, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Labor Research, Journal of Drug Issues, Journal of Human Resources, Public Administration Review, American Journal of Evaluation and other journals. She is a founding board member of the Public Management Research Association and served on the Policy Council of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management from 2004-2007 and as the editor of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory from January 2005 through December 2008. In 2004, Professor Heinrich received the David N. Kershaw Award for distinguished contributions to the field of public policy analysis and management by a person under age 40.
Prior to her appointment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003, Professor Heinrich was an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and held an academic research appointment at the University of Chicago. She received her doctorate in public policy studies from the University of Chicago.
Heinrich, Carolyn J. 2010. “Third-Party Governance under No Child Left Behind: Accountability and Performance Management Challenges in Supplemental Educational Services Provision.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 20(1): 59-80.
Heinrich, Carolyn J., Meyer, Robert H. and Greg Whitten. 2010. “Supplemental Education Services under No Child Left Behind: Who Signs Up, and What Do They Gain?” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 32 (June): 273-298.
Barnow, Burt A. and Carolyn J. Heinrich. 2010. “One Standard Fits All? The Pros and Cons of Performance Standard Adjustments.” Public Administration Review 70(1): 60-71.
Heinrich, Carolyn J. and Gerald R. Marschke. 2010. “Incentives and their Dynamics in Public Sector Performance Management Systems.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 29(1): 183-208.
Heinrich, Carolyn J. and Yeri Lopez. 2009. “Does Community Participation Produce Dividends in Social Investment Fund Projects?” World Development 37(9): 1554-1568.
Heinrich, Carolyn J., Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. and H. Brinton Milward. 2010. “A State of Agents? Sharpening the Debate and Evidence over the Extent and Impact of the Transformation of Governance.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 20(1): 3-19.
Gordon, Rachel A. and Carolyn J. Heinrich. 2009. “The Potential of a Couples Approach to Employment Assistance: Results of a Nonexperimental Evaluation.” Review of Economics of the Household 7(2): 133-158.