Wesley Yin

Wesley “Wes” Yin is a Professor of Economics at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and the Anderson School of Management. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Faculty Affiliate at the Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT. He is currently on leave during the 2023-2024 year, serving as Chief Economist of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Yin’s research focuses on health care, consumer finance, and economic inequality. His recent work studies competition and market power in health care, and the links between health care financing and consumer financial health and well-being.

His work has been published in leading economics and policy outlets such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics, JAMA, Health Affairs, and the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, and has been featured in or he has written for media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Vox, and others.

From 2012 to 2014, Yin served in the Obama Administration as Acting Chief Economist and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Microeconomic Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and in the White House Council of Economic Advisers, advancing policing on health care quality, insurance affordability, higher education finance, and housing market stability. Since 2014, Yin has advised the state of California on health care reforms, including the design of state subsidies for marketplace insurance.

Previously, he was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and Boston University, and a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy at Harvard University. He received his PhD in economics from Princeton University.

 

Selected Publications  

The Impact of Financial Assistance Programs on Health Care Utilization. 2022. (with Alyce Adams, Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney, Jinglin Wang, and Francis Wong). Forthcoming at American Economic Review: Insights.

Personalized Telephone Outreach Increased Health Insurance Take-Up for Hard-to Reach Populations. 2022. (w/ Rebecca Myerson, Nicholas Tilipman, Andrew Fehrer, Honglin Li, and Isaac Menashe) Health Affairs 41(1): 129–137.

Medical Debt in the United States, 2009-2020. 2021. (with Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney and Francis Wong) Journal of the American Medical Association 326(3). Media Coverage: NY Times, Washington Post, Vox, Marketwatch, CBS Evening News, Marketplace. JAMA editorial.

The Role of Behavioral Frictions in Health Insurance Marketplace Enrollment and Risk: Evidence from a Field Experiment. 2021. (with Richard Domurat and Isaac Menashe) American Economic Review 111(5): 1549–1574. [Online Appendix] Media Coverage: Tradeoffs Podcast

The Market for High-Quality Medicine: Retail Chain Entry and Drug Quality in India. 2019. (with Daniel Bennett) Review of Economics and Statistics 101(1) p.76-90 [Appendix]

Insurers’ Negotiating Leverage and the External Effect of Medicare Part D. 2015. (with Darius Lakdawalla), Review of Economics and Statistics 97:2 p.314-331 (an earlier version appears as NBER working paper no. 16251). Media coverage: New Yorker

R&D Policy, Agency Costs and Innovation in Personalized Medicine. 2009. Journal of Health Economics 28(5): 950-962.

Market Incentives and Pharmaceutical Innovation. 2008. Journal of Health Economics 27(4):1060-1077.

Female Empowerment: Impact of a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines. 2010. (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan) World Development 38(3): 333-344.

The Effect of the Medicare Part D Prescription Benefit on Drug Utilization and Expenditures (with Anirban Basu, James Zhang, Atonu Rabbani, David Meltzer, Caleb Alexander) Lead article at Annals of Internal Medicine 148(3): 169-177. Annals’ Summary for Patients.

Designing Targeting Schemes with Poverty Maps: Does Disaggregation Help?. 2007. (with Berk Özler, Chris Elbers, Tomoki Fujii, Peter Lanjouw) Journal of Development Economics 83(1).

Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence from a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines. 2006. (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan) Quarterly Journal of Economics 121(2). Winner of TIAA-CREF 2006 Certificate of Excellence.

Deposit Collectors (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan). 2006. Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy 6(2), Article 5.

 

Working Papers

Provider Market Power and Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Markets (with Nicholas Tilipman)

The Burden of Medical Debt and the Impact of Debt Forgiveness (with Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney and Francis Wong). J-PAL Summary. AEA Pre-registration 1 (Old Debt). AEA Pre-registration 2 (Young Debt).

Trends in Medical Debt During the COVID Pandemic (with Raymond Kluender, Benedict Guttman-Kenney, Neale Mahoney, Francis Wong, and Xuyang Xia)

 

Other Publications and Policy Articles  

Trends in Medical Debt During the COVID-19 Pandemic” (with Benedict Guttman-Kenney, Raymond Kluender, Neale Mahoney, Francis Wong, and Xuyang Xia) JAMA Health Forum. 2022, 3(5), 2022.

Options To Improve Affordability In California’s Individual Health Insurance Market,” (with Peter Lee, Katie Ravel and Nicholas Tilipman), a Covered California report for Gov. Newsom, California State Senate and State Assembly pursuant to AB1810, February, 2019

How retail drug markets in poor countries develop” (with Dan Bennett) VoxDev.org, August, 13th, 2018.

Potential Impacts of Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson on Californians and the Individual Health Insurance Market” (with John Bertko) Covered California Report, September 25, 2017

Evaluating the Potential Consequences of Terminating Direct Federal Cost-Sharing Reduction (CSR) Funding” (with Richard Domurat) Covered California Report, January 26, 2017  [Appendix]

Trump’s “populist” economic proposals come with massive catches. Here’s what to watch for.” Vox, November 18, 2016

Strengthening Risk Protection through Private Long-Term Care Insurance. Brookings Institution, Hamilton Project Discussion Paper 2015-06, June 2015. Policy Brief.

Value of Survival Gains in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (with John Penrod, J. Ross Maclean, Darius Lakdawalla and Tomas Philipson) American Journal of Managed Care 2012 Nov;18(11 Suppl):S257-64

The impact of Medicare Part D on Medicare-Medicaid Dual-eligible Beneficiaries’ Prescription Utilization and Expenditures (with Caleb Alexander and Anirban Basu), Health Services Research, February 2010, 45(1), pp. 133-151   

Valuing health technologies at NICE: Recommendations for Improved Incorporation of Treatment Value in HTA (with Dana Goldman, Darius Lakdawalla and Tomas Philipson) Health Economics October 2010, 10(11) pp. 1109-1116

Solutions and Challenges to Curing Global Health Inequality Innovations 2(4), October 2007, 2(4), pp. 72-80

Testing Savings Product Innovations Using an Experimental Methodology (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan), Asian Development Bank, Economics and Research Department Technical Paper No. 8. November, 2003

A Review of Commitment Savings Products in Developing Countries (with Nava Ashraf, Nathalie Gons, Dean Karlan) ERD Working Paper, July 2003.

 

Current Teaching

Public Finance and the Economics of Inequality (Econ 415)

Health Care Finance and Management (MBA and MPP elective) (MGMT298 & PP290)

Econometrics for Policy Analysis (MPP Core) (PP208)

Applied Policy Project (APP) Capstone Advisor (PP298A-D)

Natalie Bau

Natalie Bau is an assistant professor of economics and public policy at UCLA. She is an economist studying topics in development and education economics and is particularly interested in the industrial organization of educational markets. She has studied private schooling and teacher compensation in Pakistan, the relationship between negotiation skills and girls’ educational outcomes in Zambia, and the interactions between educational investment and cultural traditions in Indonesia, Zambia, and Ghana.

Dr. Bau received her PhD in public policy from Harvard University, and is currently an affiliate of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the Centre for Economic Policy and Research.  Prior to joining UCLA, she was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto.

Personal Academic Website.

Michael A. Stoll

Michael A. Stoll is Professor of Public Policy in the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He serves as a Fellow at the American Institutes for Research, the Brookings Institution, the Institute for Research on Poverty at University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and served as a past Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation.

Dr. Stoll’s published work explores questions of poverty, labor markets, migration, and crime. His past work includes an examination of the labor market difficulties of less-skilled workers, in particular the role that racial residential segregation, job location patterns, job skill demands, employer discrimination, job competition, transportation, job information and criminal records play in limiting employment opportunities.

His recent work examines the labor market consequences of mass incarceration and the benefits and costs of the prison boom. A recently completed book, Why Are so Many Americans in Prison, explores the causes of the American prison boom and what to do about it to insure both low crime and incarceration rates.

Much of his work has been featured in a variety of media outlets including NPR, PBS, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Economist, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, Univision, among other outlets.  He also regularly advises the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Labor, as well as for state and local governments in various capacities.

Prof. Stoll received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley.

RECENT BOOKS

 

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

Why are So Many Americans in Prison? jointly authored with Steven Raphael, New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2013.

Do Prisons Make Us Safer? The Benefits and Costs of the Prison Boom
edited with Steven Raphael, New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2009

Barriers to Reentry? The Labor Market for Released Prisoners in Post-Industrial America edited with David Weiman and Shawn Bushway, New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007 (Selected as a Noteworthy Book in Industrial Relations by Princeton University’s Industrial Relations Section.)

Manisha Shah

Manisha Shah is the Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., Endowed Chair in Social Justice and Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and Founding Director of the Global Lab for Research in Action. Shah is also a Faculty Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Faculty Affiliate at UC Berkeley’s Center for Effective Global Action,  The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and The Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor. Shah is an economist who received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.

Shah is a development economist whose primary research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of applied microeconomics, health, and development. She has written several papers on the economics of sex markets in order to learn how more effective policies and programs can be deployed to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. She also works in the area of child health and education. Shah has been the PI on various impact evaluations and randomized controlled trials and is currently leading projects in Tanzania, Indonesia, and India. She has also worked extensively in Ecuador and Mexico. Her research has been supported by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the World Bank, and the National Science Foundation among others. She is an editor at Journal of Health Economics and an Associate Editor at The Review of Economics and Statistics. Follow Shah on Twitter @Manisha_econ.

 

Published and Forthcoming Articles

Unintended Consequences of Lockdowns: COVID-19 and the Shadow Pandemic (with S. Ravindran),  Nature Human Behaviour. March 2023, 7(3). 
Media Coverage: The Wall Street Journal, World Bank Development Impact Blog, The Hindu, The Indian Express (Front Page), India Today, Quartz India, Livemint.

The Dirty Business of Eliminating Open Defecation: The Effect of Village Sanitation on Child Height from Field Experiments in Four Countries,” (with P. Gertler, M. Alzua, L. Cameron, S. Martinez, and S. Patil)  Journal of Development Economics. November 2022, 159.

Women’s Well-Being During a Pandemic and its Containment (with N. Bau, G. Khanna, C. Low, S. Sharmin, and A. Voena),  Journal of Development Economics. May 2022, 156.

Crimes against Morality: Unintended Consequences of Criminalizing Sex Work (with L. Cameron and J. Seager), Quarterly Journal of Economics.  February 2021, 136(1): 427–469.
Media Coverage: Probable CausationThe EconomistVoxDev
Policy Brief: Cato Brief

Aggregate Effects from Public Works: Evidence from India (with J. Cook), forthcoming The Review of Economics and Statistics.
Media Coverage: VoxDev

Workfare and Human Capital Investment: Evidence from India (with B. Steinberg),  Journal of Human Resources. Spring 2021, 56(2): 380–405.
Media Coverage: NBER Digest

The Right to Education Act: Trends in Enrollment, Test Scores, and School Quality (with B. Steinberg), AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, May 2019, vol. 109, pages 232-238. NBER Version of Paper with appendix here.
Media Coverage: : VoxEU, IdeasForIndia

Scaling Up Sanitation: Evidence from an RCT in Indonesia (with L. Cameron and S. Olivia),  Journal of Development Economics, May 2019, vol 138.
Media Coverage: : VoxDev

Decriminalizing Prostitution: Implications for Sexual Violence and Public Health (with S. Cunningham), The Review of Economic Studies, July 2018, 85(3):1683–1715.
Selected Media Coverage: Vox, Slate, Washington Post, WSJ, LA Weekly, UCLA, KCRW interview, WHYY show, Seriouspod Podcast

Drought of Opportunities: Contemporaneous and Long Term Impacts of Rainfall Shocks on Human Capital (with B. Steinberg),  Journal of Political Economy, April 2017, 125(2).
Media Coverage: Ideas for India

Risk-Taking Behavior in the Wake of Natural Disasters  (with L. Cameron), Journal of Human Resources, Spring 2015, 50(2): 484-515.
Media Coverage: The Huffington Post

Can Mistargeting Destroy Social Capital and Stimulate Crime? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Program in Indonesia (with L. Cameron), Economic Development and Cultural Change, January 2014, 62(2): 381-415.

Do Sex Workers Respond to Disease? Evidence from the Male Market for Sex,  American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings, 2013, 103(3): 445-50.

Intra-household Resource Allocation: Do Parents Reduce or Reinforce Child Cognitive Ability Gaps? (with P. Frijters, D. Johnston, and M. Shields), Demography, December 2013, 50:6.

Compensated for Life: Sex Work and Disease Risk (with R. Arunachalam),  Journal of Human Resources, Spring 2013, 48:345-369.

Face Value: Information and Signaling in an Illegal Market (with T. Logan), Southern Economic Journal. 2013. 79(3), 529-564.

Handedness, Health and Cognitive Development: Evidence from Children in the NLSY (with D. Johnston, M. Nicholls, and M. Shields), Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society), 2012. 

The Prostitute’s Allure: The Return to Beauty in Commercial Sex Work (with R. Arunachalam), B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2012.

Sex Work and Infection: What’s Law Enforcement Got to Do with it? (with P. Gertler), Journal of Law and Economics, November 2011, 54.
Media Coverage: The Economist

To Work or Not to Work? Child Development and Maternal Labor Supply (with P. Frijters, D. Johnston, and M. Shields), American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2009, 1(3): 97-110.

Nature’s Experiment? Handedness and Early Childhood Development  (with D. Johnston, M. Nicholls, and M. Shields), Demography, May 2009, 46(2): 281-302.

Prostitutes and Brides? (with R. Arunachalam),  American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings, May 2008, 98(2), 516-522.

Risky Business: The Market for Unprotected Commercial Sex (with P. Gertler and S. Bertozzi),  Journal of Political Economy, June 2005, 113(3), 518-550.
Media Coverage: NYTimes, Slate

Books and Handbook Chapters

Economics of Sex Work and Policy Considerations (with S. Cunningham). forthcoming in Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Prostitution. Scott Cunningham and Manisha Shah, editors. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Sex Work and Risky Sex in Developing Countries, In: Anthony J. Culyer (editor), Encyclopedia of Health Economics, Vol 3. San Diego: Elsevier; 2014. pp. 311-315.

Sex Work, with V. Rao, In The New Oxford Companion to Economics in India (Kaushik Basu and Annemie Maertens, editors), Delhi: Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2012.

Working Papers (Please email for most recent version)

“Sex, Power, and Adolescence: Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Behaviors” (with J. Seager, J. Montalvao, and M. Goldstein), 2023.

“Improving Mental Health of Adolescent Girls in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Causal Evidence from Life Skills Programming,” (with S. Baird, J. Seager, B. Avuwadah, J. Hamory, S. Sabarwal, and A. Vyas)  r&r  Journal of Human Resources.

“Violent Discipline and Parental Behavior: Short- and Medium-term Effects of Virtual Parenting Support to Caregivers,” (with L Dinarte-Diaz, S. Ravindran, S Powers, and H Baker-Henningham) 2023.

“Reducing bias among health care providers: Experimental evidence from Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and Pakistan,” (with Z. Wagner, C. Moucheraud, A. Wollum, W. Friedman, and W. Dow),  2023.

“Intergenerational Impacts from the World’s Largest Early Childhood Program,” with S. Ravindran, 2022.

Financial Incentives and Other Nudges Do Not Increase COVID-19 Vaccinations among the Vaccine Hesitant (with T. Chang, M. Jacobson, R. Pramanik & S. Shah). 2021. NBER Working Paper 29403.
Media Coverage: WSJ, MarketPlace, KCRW, Bloomberg, SF Chronicle.

Human Capital Investment in the Presence of Child Labor (with N. Bau, M. Rotemberg, and B. Steinberg), 2020. NBER Working Paper 27241.

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Allen J. Scott

For the last several years, Professor Scott’s research has been focused on issues of industrialization, urbanization, and regional development. This research has involved extensive theoretical and empirical work. On the theoretical front, Dr. Scott has written numerous pieces on the interrelations between industrial organization, technology, local labor markets, and location, with particular reference to the phenomenon of agglomeration economies. He also has carried out a large number of studies of individual industrial sectors in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Most recently, he has been researching the origins and development of high-technology industry in Southern California, and the policy predicaments thrown into relief by the recent crisis of the region’s aerospace-defense industry in the post-Cold War era. Professor Scott has served as a member of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Commission’s Aerospace Task Force. He also has been engaged in the formulation of a variety of economic development strategies for Southern California, including the setting up of an electric vehicle industry and an advanced ground transportation industry.

A Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and a Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, Dr. Scott has been a visiting scholar at Zhongshan University in the People’s Republic of China, the University of Paris, the University of Hong Kong and the University of Sao Paulo. From 1990 to 1995 he was director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA. He formerly served as Associate Dean of the School of Public Policy and Social Research.

Matthew Drennan

Matthew Drennan has been a Visiting Professor in the department since 2004.   He is an Emeritus Professor, City and Regional Planning, Cornell University.

His recent book “Income Inequality: Why It Matters and Why Most Economists Didn’t Notice” was published by Yale University Press in November, 2015. It was reviewed in the Sunday New York Times Book Review, December 20, 2015.

His current research focuses on how minimum wage increases in big cities affect consumption expenditures of low-wage workers in the metropolitan area. Most of his past work has been in urban and regional economics. In the “Encyclopedia of New York City” he wrote the history of the city’s economy from colonial times to the present.

Articles:

“Do Agglomeration Economies Decay over Short Distances? Are They Stable in the Face of Shocks? Evidence From Manhattan,” International Journal of Urban Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 1, 2018

“Does Public Transit Use Enhance the Economic Efficiency of Urban Areas?” with Charles M. Brecher, Journal of Transport and Land Use, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2012.

“Measuring Urban Agglomeration Economies with Office Rents,” with Hugh Kelly, Journal of Economic Geography, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2011.

“Falling Behind: California’s Interior Metropolitan Areas,” with Michael Manville,Berkeley Planning Journal, Vol. 21, 2008.

“Economics: Diminishing Marginal Utility” Challenge, September-October, 2006

“Possible Sources of Wage Divergence among Metropolitan Areas of the United States,” Urban Studies, Vol. 42, No. 9, 2005.

“Unit Root Tests of Sigma Income Convergence Across U.S. Metropolitan Areas,” with Jose Lobo and Deborah Strumsky, Journal of Economic Geography, Vol. 4, No. 5, 2004.

“Transition and Renewal; The Emergence of a Diverse Upstate Economy,”with Rolf Pendall and Susan Christopherson. Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, the Brookings Institution, January, 2004.

“The Economic Benefits of Public Investment in Transportation: A Review of Recent Literature,” Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2003.

“Sectoral Shares, Specialization, and Metropolitan Wages in the United States, 1969-1996,” with Shannon Larsen, Jose Lobo, Deborah Strumsky, and Wahyu Utomo. Urban Studies, Vol. 39, June, 2002.

Book Chapters:

“What’s Wrong With Los Angeles, and What Could Fix It?” California Policy Options, Daniel J.B. Mitchell, ed., UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, 2017.

“Economy,” The encyclopedia of New York City, 2nd Edition, Ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2010.

“The Economic Cost of Disasters- Permanent or Ephemeral?” in Economic Costs and Consequences of Terrorism, Peter Gordon and Harry Richardson, eds, Edward Elgar, 2007.

Susanne Lohmann

Susanne Lohmann is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Director of the Jacob Marschak Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Mathematics in the Behavioral Sciences at UCLA.

Professor Lohmann received her Ph.D. in economics and political economy from Carnegie Mellon University in 1991. She taught at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business before joining UCLA in 1993. Professor Lohmann was John M. Olin Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University; Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, also at Carnegie Mellon University; James and Doris McNamara Fellow at Stanford University; John M. Olin Fellow at the University of Southern California; Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; and Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

Professor Lohmann’s articles on collective action and central banking have appeared in American Economic Review, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, World Politics,International Organization and other leading social science journals. Her current research focus is the political economy of research universities and higher education. She is completing a book titled How Universities Think: The Hidden Work of a Complex Institution, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

Professor Lohmann teaches courses on ethics and governance. Her online course on “Diversity, Disagreement, and Democracy” embeds mini games of cooperation, competition, coordination and collaboration in a massively multiplayer game of life. She is the recipient of two teaching awards.

Daniel J.B. Mitchell

Daniel J.B. Mitchell is Ho-su Wu professor at the Anderson Graduate School of Management and the School of Public Affairs, U.C.L.A. Within the latter school, he chaired the Department of Policy Studies during 1996-97. Prof. Mitchell was formerly director of the U.C.L.A. Institute of Industrial Relations (1979-90) and continues to serve on the Institute’s advisory committee.

During Phase II of the federal wage/price controls program of the early 1970s, Prof. Mitchell was chief economist of the Pay Board, the agency that administered wage controls. He was twice associated with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., including a stint as a senior fellow in the economic studies program (1978-79), and participated in several Brookings-sponsored research projects. Professional activities have included memberships on the Executive Boards of the Industrial Relations Research Association (both national and Southern California), the North American Economics and Finance Association, and the Institute of Industrial Relations Association. Prof. Mitchell is the immediate past president of the North American Economics and Finance Association. He has also served on the nominating committee of the American Economic Association and on the editorial boards of various academic journals. He is editor of a book series on workplace studies published by M.E. Sharpe, Inc. and began a term as co-editor of the journal Industrial Relations in 1997.

Prof. Mitchell regularly served as a member of the Human Resource Forecast Panel while it operated at the Conference Board and later at U.C.L.A. He is a member of the International Industrial Relations Association and chairs one of its study groups (Pay Systems). At UCLA, he was co-director and then director (1999-2000) of the UCLA Anderson Business Forecasting Project. As a faculty member at UCLA, he has created a course on “California Policy Issues” (now co-taught with former presidential candidate and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis), now a core course of the minor in Public Affairs. Prof. Mitchell has served as a consultant to the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve Board, the President’s Council on Wage and Price Stability, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the International Labour Organisation. His publications have generally been in the areas of wage determination, wage-price controls, concession bargaining, flexible pay plans, non-wage employee benefits, use of labor-market data, labor standards in international trade, and other aspects of labor-market analysis. Prof. Mitchell is the author of Pensions, Politics, and the Elderly: Historic Social Movements and Their Lessons for Our Aging Society (M.E. Sharpe, 2000).

The book uses California’s colorful experience with “pensionite” movements of the state’s seniors during the period from the 1920s through the 1940s to draw implications for the upcoming retirement of the baby boom. Prof. Mitchell has two children and resides in Santa Monica, California with his wife Alice.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

“Pensions, Politics, and the Elderly”
ME Sharpe, 2000

Paul Ong

Professor Ong has done research on the labor market status of minorities and immigrants, displaced high-tech workers, work and spatial/transportation mismatch, and environmental justice. He is currently engaged in several projects, including an analysis of the relationship between sustainability and equity, the racial wealth gap, and the role of urban structures on the reproduction of inequality.

Previous research projects have included studies of the impact of defense cuts on California’s once-dominant aerospace industry, the impact of immigration on the employment status of young African Americans, and the influence of car ownership and subsidized housing on welfare usage.

Dr. Ong is the Director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge and editor of AAPI Nexus, and has served as an advisor to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and to the California Department of Social Services and the state Department of Employment Development, as well as the Wellness Foundation and the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

He received a master’s in urban planning from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in Economics, University of California, Berkeley. Along with his quantitative research, his professional practice includes teaching and applying visual forms of communication.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

Set-Aside Contracting in S.B.A.’s 8(A) Program
Paul Ong, Review of Black Political Economy Vol 28, No. 3, Winter 2001, pp. 59-71.

Car Ownership and Welfare-to-Work
Paul M. Ong, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 21, No. 2, Spring 2002, pp. 255-268.

Impacts of Affirmative Action: Policies and Consequences in California
Paul Ong, editor,  Alta Mira Press, 1999.

The State of Asian Pacific America: Transforming Race Relations
Paul M. Ong, editor, Asian Pacific American Public Policy Institute, LEAP and UCLA AASC, Los Angeles, CA, 2000.

The New Asian Immigration in Los Angeles and Global Restructuring
Paul Ong, Edna Bonacich, and Lucie Cheng, editors, Temple University Press, 1994.