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,

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. Bailey studied deregulation and regulatory capture through her career and contributed to the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act, a 1978 United States federal regulation that freed airlines from government control in pricing, route planning, competition and market composition. Bailey became the first woman dean to head a Top 10 graduate school with this appointment. She served on the Board of Directors of TIAA-CREF, Altria, and CSX Corporation, and was a trustee of The Brookings Institution and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Bailey also served as the Vice Chairman of Bancroft NeuroHealth.

Bailey was noted to have opened opportunities for women in economics. An obituary in The Washington Post called Bailey a "pathbreaker for women in economics". She was the first woman to graduate with a doctorate in economics from Princeton University and was often among the lone women in various corporate boards. During her confirmation hearing in the late 1970s to become the Civil Aeronautics Board commissioner, she was asked by Ted Stevens, a senator from Alaska, about her "steel" to which she is noted to have remarked that she was "tougher" than she looked.

Bailey received the Carolyn Shaw Bell award from the American Economic Association in 2009. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977 and held a chair at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Personal life Bailey was married to James Lawrence Bailey in a marriage that ended in a divorce. She had two sons, with one of them predeceasing her in 2018.

Bailey was suffering from Parkinson's disease and died on August 19, 2022, at her home in Reston, Virginia, aged 83.

Select published works