Dr. Sean McAlinden, a coauthor of CAR’s “Beyond the Big Leave” study, is the Vice President of Research and CAR’s Chief Economist. He is also the Director of the Economics and Business Group at CAR.

Dr. McAlinden has performed contract research for the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Education and Labor, the Library of Congress, and numerous foundations, corporations, labor unions and state and local agencies. In addition, he has provided expert testimony to various federal legislative bodies.

Dr. McAlinden completed a doctoral dissertation in economics at the University of Michigan in 1986. He then worked at the Industrial Technology Institute in Ann Arbor as a manufacturing economist. In 1989, he moved to the University of Michigan’s Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation as an associate research scientist. In the fall of 2000, he moved with the Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation to help create the Center for Automotive Research.