Martha Olney

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title: "Martha Olney" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["university-of-california,-berkeley-faculty", "university-of-california,-berkeley-alumni", "21st-century-american-economists", "american-women-economists", "1956-births", "living-people", "american-lgbtq-academics", "21st-century-american-women"] description: "American economist" topic_path: "society/education" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Olney" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American economist ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox economist"]

Field	Value
name	Martha L. Olney
birth_date
birth_place	Oakland, California
nationality	American
institution	University of Massachusetts, Amherst
University of California, Berkeley
alma_mater	University of Redlands
University of California, Berkeley
doctoral_advisor	Richard Sutch
awards	Distinguished Teaching Award Recipient, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1990-1991
Katharine Coman Lecturer in Economic History, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, March 23, 1995
Jonathan Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching Economic History, Economic History Association, 1997
Distinguished Teaching Award Recipient, University of California, Berkeley, 2002–2003
Great Teachers in Economics, Stavros Center for Economic Education, Florida State University, 2006–2007
Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship of GSIs, University of California, Berkeley, 2014–2015
spouse	Rev. Esther Hargis
url	http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~olney
repec_prefix	f
repec_id	pol213
::

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Martha Louise Olney (born November 27, 1956) is a teaching professor of economics (2002–present) at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a winner of local and national teaching awards, and has authored several leading undergraduate economics textbooks.

Education

Olney received a B.A. at the University of Redlands and a Ph.D. in economics in 1985 from the University of California, Berkeley.

Academic career

Martha Olney is a teaching professor of economics (2002-) at the University of California, Berkeley. She was previously an associate professor of economics (with tenure) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her early career research focused on consumer durables, the advent of consumer credit in the 1920s, and the Great Depression. She has been awarded the Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award, which is given to only three professors per year, and the Jonathan Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching Economic History, by the Economic History Association (in 1997).

Textbook authorship

• "Essentials of Economics" with Paul Krugman and Robin Wells
• "Macroeconomics" with J. Bradford DeLong
• "Microeconomics as a Second Language"
• "Macroeconomics as a Second Language"

Selected Research publications

• Olney, Martha L. Buy now, pay later: advertising, credit, and consumer durables in the 1920s. University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
• Olney, Martha L. "Avoiding default: The role of credit in the consumption collapse of 1930." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 114, no. 1 (1999): 319–335.
• Olney, Martha L. "When your word is not enough: race, collateral, and household credit." The Journal of Economic History 58, no. 2 (1998): 408–431.
• Olney, Martha L. "Credit as a production-smoothing device: the case of automobiles, 1913–1938." The Journal of Economic History 49, no. 2 (1989): 377–391.

References

References

1. "Bio". eml.berkeley.edu.
2. "Interview with Martha Olney".
3. "Martha Olney".
4. "Martha Olney {{!}} Women in Economics Podcasts {{!}} St. Louis Fed".
5. Olney, Martha. (Fall 2005). "So You Want to Be an Adjunct Professor?". CSWEP News.
6. "Social Sciences: Distinguished Teaching and Service Awards {{!}} College of Letters & Science".
7. "Economic History Association Prizes and Awards".
8. Martha L. Olney. (27 January 2009). "Microeconomics as a Second Language". Wiley.
9. Martha L. Olney. (11 January 2011). "Macroeconomics as a Second Language". Wiley Global Education.

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