Program Manager:
Yuezhong Zheng

Program Assistant:
Michelle Santana

 

Academic Director

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Professor Lorentzen specializes in the economics of information, incentives, and institutions. He received his PhD in Economic Analysis and Policy from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and previously taught at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. He has published research on governance and social control in China, media management, anti-corruption, environmental transparency, long-run economic growth, qualitative research methods, the creation of...

Education:
  • PhD, Economic Analysis and Policy, Stanford University Graduate School of Business

Full-Time Faculty

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Professor Anttila-Hughes received his PhD in Sustainable Development from Columbia University. His research focuses on understanding the social impacts of environmental processes, particularly those influenced by environmental degradation and climate change.

Professor Anttila-Hughes' current research areas include: public health impacts of the climate; behavioral responses to new information about environmental risks; and determinants of the spread of environmental attitudes and ideas.

Education:
  • PhD, Sustainable Development, Columbia University
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Dr. Chakraborty received her PhD at the University of Minnesota. Her areas of specialization include: applied macroeconomics, international macroeconomics, international finance, and development economics. Dr. Chakraborty has published research articles in the Journal of International Business Studies, Economics Letters, and the Journal of World Economic Review.

Education:
  • PhD, University of Minnesota
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Andrew Hobbs studies how droughts, floods, and other disasters affect people, and develops tools to reduce the impact of climate change on farmers. He focuses in particular on how the costs of climate shocks are distributed within households. He is currently working on combining machine learning and satellite data for faster and more accurate detection of disasters and on insurance to sustain women's businesses through droughts in Northern Kenya.

Before entering academia, Andrew studied...

Education:
  • UC Davis, PhD in Agricultural & Resource Economics, 2020
  • University of British Columbia, MA in Economics, 2010
  • University of Utah, BS/BA in Economics/International Studies, 2009
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Michael Jonas is from the University of California, Davis. His concentration area of specialization is monetary economics. He completed his doctorate degree at the University of California, Davis.

Education:
  • PhD, Economics, University of California, Davis
  • San Francisco State University, MA, Economics
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Professor Katz is PhD from University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her research areas of specialization are development economics, women in development, agricultural economics, and history of economic thought. Dr. Katz's recent research has focused on the relationship between gender, intra-household bargaining and development in Latin America.

Education:
  • PhD, University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Professor Khachiyan studies the populations most exposed to aggregate industrial transitions, such as climate adaptation and automation. He uses data science methods, unconventional data sources, and leading methods in causal identification to inform current policy issues within these topics. Arman teaches in both the Undergraduate and Master's  Economics programs on topics including microeconomic principles, applied econometrics, and spatial economics.

Beyond academia, Arman has worked in...

Education:
  • UC San Diego, PhD in Economics, 2022
  • UC Berkeley, BA in Economics, 2013

Robizon Khubulashvili's research is at the intersection of theoretical, behavioral, and experimental microeconomics. A common question in his research is, how can we use a user's revealed preferences to improve the performance of online platforms? Robizon has studied this question in two settings: when monetary incentives are missing (an online gaming platform) and when monetary incentives are present (an online gambling platform). His work suggests that heterogeneity among users is an essential...

Education:
  • Penn State University, PhD, 2020
  • International School of Economics at TSU, MA, 2013
  • Tbilisi State University, BA, 2011

Man-Lui Lau received his PhD from Cornell University. His areas of specialization are microeconomics, macroeconomics, options and futures, mathematical economics and the economies of East Asia. Dr. Lau has published papers on the theory of economic growth and Asian economies. His current research includes the East and Southeast Asian economies, financial development and economic growth, and the theory of Real Options and it's application.

Education:
  • PhD, Cornell University
Expertise:
  • Microeconomics
  • Macroeconomics
  • Options and futures
  • Mathematical economics
  • Economies of East Asia
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Mario Muzzi is a graduate of USF's School of Law and has practiced law in California for over twenty years. He has an MA and a BS in economics and has been a faculty member in the economics department at USF since 1999. He teaches intermediate microeconomics, intermediate macroeconomics, international economics, and interdisciplinary courses in law and economics and behavioral (psychology) economics. Mario also teaches economics as an adjunct professor in the Department of Political Economy at...

Education:
  • JD University of San Francisco
  • MA San Francisco State University
  • BS Santa Clara University

Timothy Tung was born and raised in Los Alamos, New Mexico. His interest in working with and fostering first-generation students stems from multiple personal and professional experiences. These experiences include teaching for Upward Bound and SEO Scholars and writing curriculum focused on supporting first-generation students.

At the University of San Francisco, Timothy joined the following Faculty Learning Community: “Supporting First-Generation College Students in Classrooms, Across Schools...

Education:
  • University of San Francisco, MA in Economics, 2013
  • University of California, Santa Cruz, BA in Business Management Economics, 2010
Expertise:
  • Principles of Microeconomics/Macroeconomics
  • Mathematics (Algebra - Calculus)
  • First-Generation Student Curriculum Development & Implementation
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Areas of research specialization are in the use of econometric, experimental, and game-theoretic tools to analyze the impact of development programs. Professor Wydick's recent work examines the impact of development programs such as microfinance, child sponsorship, and in-kind donation of children's shoes, wheelchairs for the disabled, and clean wood-burning stoves. Other recent work studies the role of hope and aspirations in escaping poverty traps. His academic publications have appeared in...

Education:
  • UC Berkeley, Ph.D. Economics, 1996
  • UC Davis, MS Agricultural Economics, 1988
  • UC Davis, BS Agricultural Economics, 1986
Expertise:
  • Microfinance
  • Applied Econometrics
  • Education and Health Interventions
  • Psychology and Economics

Part-Time Faculty

Evan is a Senior Manager of Product Innovation at Netflix for Growth and Messaging Algorithms. He leads the development of machine learning algorithms that personalize the billions of emails and push notifications that Netflix sends every year. He specializes in the development of algorithms that measure the causal impact of customer experiences and then optimizes them. Prior to this role, he has five years of experience as a data scientist where he built fraud algorithms for Capital One and...

Education:
  • Pardee RAND Graduate Schoo, Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis, 2014
  • UC San Diego, BS in Management Science, 2003
  • UC San Diego, BA in Political Science, 2003

Adam Gorski is a senior data scientist at DocuSign. He specializes in predictive modeling, experimentation, and natural language processing. His education background is in economics, public policy, and data analysis.

Education:
  • Master of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
  • MA, International Developmental Economics, University of San Francisco
  • BA, Economics, University of San Francisco

Moonhawk Kim is the director of research practice partnerships and community engagement at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Education. He is building up infrastructure for practitioners at Oakland Unified School District and researchers and staff at UC Berkeley to engage in productive collaborative partnership projects to improve educational outcomes. Prior to his current role, Moonhawk was supervisor of analytics at the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), where he used social science...

Education:
  • Stanford University, MA, PhD, 2005
  • UC Berkeley, BA in Economics and Political Science, 1999

Nihar Shah is a researcher at Jump Crypto, where he currently works on cryptocurrency questions around protocol and token design. He has also worked on Meta's Libra/Diem project in a similar capacity. Prior to his work in cryptocurrency, he worked on experimentation projects, particularly for Meta's advertising and payments platforms. Nihar graduated from Harvard in 2018 with a PhD in Economics.

Education:
  • Harvard University, PhD in Economics, 2018
  • Harvard University, AM in Economics, 2014
  • Harvard University, AM in Statistics, 2011
  • Harvard University, AB in Economics, 2011

Celine Sun is the Head of Data Science at Dropbox, where her team works on machine learning modeling, causal inference, and experimentation to drive Dropbox’s go-to-market strategy. Previously she was the Senior Director of Data Science at Wealthfront, an online financial advising company. Celine specializes in applying economic/econometric theory to business problems and delivering scaled solutions.

Education:
  • University of Washington, Ph.D. in Financial Economics

Faculty Emeritus

Hartmut Fischer received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Fischer has a number of areas of specialization: international trade, international finance and development economics. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank and the European Union. Research interests include economic problems faced by countries in transition from socialist market economies, country risk analysis, issues of governance, the process of convergence vs. divergence between poor and rich...

Prof. Lehmann obtained his PhD from Cornell University and taught at the University of San Francisco in traditional and on-line venues. He is the author of The Irwin Guide To Using The Wall Street Journal, which sold 250,000 copies in seven editions. Prof. Lehmann also developed a popular seminar, Be Your Own Economist ®, on business and investment conditions, that he offers to investors, corporations and professional groups. The San Francisco media frequently interview Prof. Lehmann on current...

Charles N'cho-Oguie (N'cho) is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of San Francisco (USF), where he taught macroeconomics, econometrics, and development macroeconomics for nearly two decades (1986–2005). Upon early retirement, Professor N'cho devoted the majority of his time to development work, especially in Africa. He has also spent more than 20 years working as a senior international consultant for the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the United Nations...

Education:
  • PhD, Applied Economics, Stanford University
  • MS, Operational Research, Stanford University
  • MS, Statistics, Data Analysis and Statistical Computing, Stanford University
  • DEA, Economics, University...
SFH Downtown Campus, Room 608

John Veitch, Professor of Finance, and Director of the M.S. in Financial Analysis program, is an esteemed faculty member with over two decades of academic and chief administrative service to the university. Specializing in financial analysis and risk management, Dr. Veitch is the co-author of a number of articles on country risk in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa due to contributing factors of financial integration, currency devaluation and currency contagion. Professor Veitch served...

Education:
  • C.F.A. (Chartered Financial Analyst) designation, 1999
  • Ph.D., Economics, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 1985
  • Degree: B.A., Economics and Mathematics, Trinity College, University of...

Visiting Faculty

Lawrence De Geest is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Suffolk University and a Senior Data Scientist at Lyft. Professor De Geest’s academic research uses experiments, game theory and computational models to study institutional emergence and coordination problems that stem from misaligned incentives and private information. In his role at Lyft, Professor De Geest works on causal inference. Prior to joining Lyft, Professor De Geest was a Senior Data Scientist at the National Basketball...

Education:
  • UMass-Amherst, PhD in Environmental Economics, 2017
  • University of Iowa, BA in International Studies, 2009
Expertise:
  • Econometrics
  • Experiments
  • Causal Inference
  • Machine Learning
  • Complex Systems