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- [Christina] The most important thing
that I try to pass on

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is the sense that economics
is an empirical field,

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then if you get
new empirical evidence,

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you're going to have
to change the way

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you think about the economy.

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I think being open to that

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is the most important thing
for a young economist to know.

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Economists -- not a group
with a lot of Marys, Natashas or Juanitas,

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and that's caused a lot of controversy.

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However, what's often overlooked
are the actual female economists

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who are pushing economics forward

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by addressing real-world issues.

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Welcome to Women in Economics.

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♪ [music] ♪

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I grew up in a family

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where public policy
was discussed a lot.

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I was planning to be a lawyer,

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so I was going to major
in Government.

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And as part of the Government
major at my college,

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you had to take
a year of Economics.

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I was about three weeks in,
and I was hooked,

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like the government major's gone,
the lawyer's gone,

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I was in an Economist.

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Christina Romer
is a macro economic historian.

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She takes the tools
of modern economics,

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statistics, and data

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and applies them
to historical questions.

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- [Narrator] Christie's researcher agenda
throughout her career

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has focused on a course set of topics

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about economic fluctuations
and business cycles.

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She's been asking and answering fascinating questions about our economy,

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starting with her dissertation as a graduate student at MIT.

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There, she changed her understanding of how the economy has grown over time.

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I think the questions that came to me were about monetary policy and business cycles and the Great Depression.