Michael A. Stoll is Professor and Chair of Public Policy in the School of Public Affairs, and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Urban Planning and a BS in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley. He also served as a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City. His main research interests include the study of urban poverty and inequality (specifically the interplay of labor markets, race/ethnicity, geography and policy), and crime and prisons.

Dr. Stoll’s published 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. Much of this work has been featured in a variety of media outlets including NPR, PBS, ABC Chicago Talk Radio, the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times, among other outlets.

Currently, Dr. Stoll is working on major research projects that examine the labor market consequences of mass incarceration, the benefits and costs of the prison boom, the reasons for the prison boom in the U.S., the social and economic consequences of urban sprawl, and the sources and consequences of differences in auto insurance premiums and traffic patterns within metropolitan areas.