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Sarah F Small, PhD

(she/her)
Assistant Professor, Economics
College of Business

Location

Decary 309B
Biddeford Campus
Eligible for Student Opportunities

Dr. Sarah F. Small is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the College of Business at the University of New England. Before joining UNE, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah, a Postdoctoral Scholar at Rutgers University, and a Visiting Research Fellow at Duke University. 

Her research is in feminist economics and focuses on a variety of topics including caring labor, public policy, history of economic thought, methodology, and pedagogy. She has published in journals such as World Development, Feminist Economics, Housing Policy Debate, Review of Political Economy, Journal of Economics Education, Review of Social Economy, and History of Political Economy, among others. She has been featured in media outlets such as Marketplace on NPR, Business Insider, Yahoo! Finance, KCPW Salt Lake Public Radio, and New Jersey Business Magazine.

Dr. Small is enthusiastic about undergraduate teaching and research collaboration. Her forthcoming coauthored book A Guide to Incorporating Gender into the Teaching of Economics hits shelves October 2026. 

Credentials

Education

PhD, Economics
Colorado State University
2022
MA, Economics
Colorado State University
2018
BA, Economics (Minors in Mathematics and Women's Studies)
Assumption University
2016

Research

Selected publications

  • Elmore, C. E., Ahn, S., Alnajar, M., Hebdon, M. T., Small, S. F., Stoddard, G. J., & Ornstein, K. A. (2026). Caregiving Across Distances: Residential Proximity, Care Activities, and Mental Health. The Gerontologist, gnag150.
  • Bhoumik, L., Small, S. F., & Perry, T. (2026). Does Eliminating the Subminimum Wage for Workers with Disabilities Improve Labor Force Outcomes? Empirical Evidence from the United States. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 1-18.
  • Small, S. F., Genç, Y., Perry, T., & Farra, H. (2026). Is there Time to Teach our Kids? Race, Gender, and Work Requirements for Childcare Subsidies. Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, 1-26.
  • Small, S. F., & Beltran Figueroa, L. (2026). The gendered effects of# MeToo and nondisclosure agreements on workplace social capital in the United States. Review of Social Economy, 1-33.
  • Small, S. F., & Perry, T. (2026). Place and Space for Feminist Economists? The Development and Maintenance of Feminist Economics Graduate Training in the United States. In Missing Voices in Economics: Addressing the Gender Gap (pp. 135-154). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
  • Perry, T., & Small, S. F. (2026). Can Gender Economics Courses Attract More Undergraduate Women to Economics Departments?. In Missing Voices in Economics: Addressing the Gender Gap (pp. 155-171). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
  • Small, S. F., & Ramirez-Barraza, J. (2025). Barbara Bergmann's scholarship on the economic risks of being a housewife. In The Elgar Companion to Women and Heterodox Economics (pp. 186-200). Edward Elgar Publishing.
  • Small, S. F. (2025). Union coverage and men’s participation in unpaid social reproduction in the United States. Review of Radical Political Economics, 57(4), 850-874.
  • Genç, Y., & Small, S. F. (2025, October). Supporting childcare supply in the United States: An economic policy review and research agenda. In Forum for Social Economics (Vol. 54, No. 4, pp. 459-477). Routledge.
  • Small, S. F., Dehn, M., & Beltran-Figueroa, L. (2025). Understanding the Intellectual Traditions of Claudia Goldin’s Nobel Winning Work on Gender and its Context in Feminist Economics. Review of Political Economy, 37(3), 1164-1185
  • Small, S. F. (2025). Gender marker laws and access to emergency rental assistance for transgender renters in the United States during COVID-19. Housing Policy Debate, 35(3), 513-538.
  • Small, S. F. (2025). What is a feminist quantitative method? Opportunities for feminist econometrics. Feminist Economics, 31(2), 35-56.
  • Small, S. F., & Beltran-Figueroa, L. (2025). What is a Feminist Approach to Research in the History of Economic Thought? Methods in the Field. Œconomia. History, Methodology, Philosophy, (15-1), 5-29.
  • Small, S. F., Sinha, A., Mackett, O., & Braunstein, E. (2025). Diversity in feminist economics research methods: trends from the Global South. Journal of Economic Methodology, 1-25.
  • Small, S. F., & Figueroa, L. B. (2024). Teaching time use in economics classes: introducing students to time poverty and inequality in unpaid work. Advances in Economics Education, 3(2), 148-163.
  • Small, S. F., Beltran Figueroa, L., Masci, L., Mehrish, N., Riddiford Graham, I., & Pressman, S. (2024). A History of the Eastern Economic Association: 50 Years of Finding Space for Pluralism and Inclusion in Economics. Eastern Economic Journal, 50(4), 441-471.
  • Small, S. F. (2024). Bringing breadth and relevance to introductory economics courses using JEL codes. The Journal of economic educaTion, 55(4), 425-433.
  • Small, S. F., van der Meulen Rodgers, Y., & Perry, T. (2024). Immigrant women and the covid-19 pandemic: an intersectional analysis of frontline occupational crowding in the United States. In Forum for Social Economics (Vol. 53, No. 3, pp. 281-306). Routledge.
  • Han, E. S., & Small, S. F. (2024). Labor Market Experiences of US Veterans During COVID-19: Women’s Relative Advantage. Eastern Economic Journal, 50(3), 278-306.
  • Small, S. F., & Braunstein, E. (2024). Has the feminist economics intellectual project lost its way? an analysis of the journal’s evolution. Feminist Economics, 30(1), 1-39.
  • Small, S. F., & van der Meulen Rodgers, Y. (2023). The gendered effects of investing in physical and social infrastructure. World Development, 171, 106347.
  • Small, S. F. (2023). Patriarchal rent seeking in entrepreneurial households: An examination of business ownership and housework burdens in black and white US couples. Feminist Economics, 29(4), 65-102.
  • Small, S. F. (2022). Tracing Barbara Bergmann's occupational crowding hypothesis: A recent history. History of Political Economy, 54(S1), 193-220.
  • Small, S. F. (2022). Facing a care crunch: Childcare disruption and economic hardships for maine parents during COVID-19. Maine Policy Review, 31(1), 31-40.