Olney received her Doctor of Philosophy in Economics in 1985 from the. Her dissertation work on consumer durables, the advent of consumer cr in the 1920s, and the Great Depression, led to a book, "Buy Now, Pay Later: Advertising, Cr, and Consumer Durables in the 1920s," and several related journal articles
Academic Martha Olney is a permanent Adjunct Professor of Economics (since 2002) at the University of California, Berkeley. She was previously an Associate Professor of Economics (with tenure) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of "Essentials of Economics" with Paul Krugman and Robin Wells, "Macroeconomics" with J. Bradford DeLong, and "Microeconomics as a Second Language.".
She is a winner of local and national teaching awards, and has authored several leading undergraduate economics textbooks. She has been awarded the Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award (in 2003), 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).
