Department: Public Policy

Ajwang Rading

March 20, 2025/in Public Policy Artificial Intelligence, Economics, Emerging Technologies, Entrepreneurship, National Security All Faculty Faculty /by Ronaldo Avina

Ajwang Rading is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. An entrepreneur-investor, lawyer, and policy advisor, his interdisciplinary research and teaching examine the nexus of emerging technologies (with an emphasis on artificial intelligence), law, public policy, ethics and safety, and the societal and economic implications of innovation.

In addition to his academic appointment, Rading serves as Co-Founder & Partner at Silicon AI Advisory, the leading global law firm and consultancy dedicated exclusively to artificial intelligence matters. He is also the Managing Partner of AMR Ventures, a fund focused on catalyzing American economic prosperity through strategic investments in small and medium businesses, and Partner of Lekadora Group, a real estate holding company.

Previously, as an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Rading advised large technology companies, startups, and venture capital firms as “outside General Counsel” on emerging technologies, corporate governance, venture financings, mergers & acquisitions, and public markets, as well as national security, regulatory compliance, and strategic crisis management.

Rading’s public service includes a U.S. Congressional campaign (CA-16, 2022) and work as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Cory Booker and then-U.S.-Congressman (now-U.S.-Senator) Adam Schiff. At the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, Rading researched and documented over 4,000 lynchings throughout the American South and helped establish the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

Today, Rading serves on the boards of LifeMoves and Human Rights Watch (Silicon Valley committee), and is a Humanity in Action Senior Fellow and Perplexity AI Fellow. He writes -1 to 1, a newsletter on building businesses from scratch, followed by over 35,000 people across Silicon Valley and California. He is regularly invited to speak at events such as SXSW and SF Tech Week, and has guest-lectured at institutions such as Stanford Graduate School of Business, UC Berkeley School of Law, and the University of Lucerne in Switzerland.

Rading holds a J.D. from UCLA School of Law, where he served as Articles Editor of the UCLA Law Review, and a B.A. in Political Science from UCLA.

Personal website: www.ajwangrading.com
Connect with him on Linkedin

Corey J. Matthews

June 28, 2024/in Public Policy Change Management, Leadership, Nonprofit Organizations, Social Change, Strategic Planning All Faculty Faculty /by Ronaldo Avina

Corey Matthews is a social change leader with 15 years of experience designing, evaluating, and leading community-based programs to advance more positive outcomes for historically at-risk populations. He currently serves as a Vice President of Global Philanthropy with JPMorgan Chase where he helps to manage a grant portfolio in Los Angeles that aligns with the strategic impact objectives of the company. He also plays a key role in building partnerships to bolster the company’s overarching Corporate Responsibility initiatives in the region.

Previously, Corey served as the Chief Operating Officer of Community Coalition – a permanent community-based institution in South Los Angeles – where he participated on the executive team to advance a robust policy agenda, direct operations, guide organization-wide strategic planning processes and launch key projects. Throughout his professional career, Corey has facilitated initiatives to serve underrepresented communities and has worked in think tanks, local government and nonprofits committed to changing systems and reducing poverty. Corey also co-leads Coaching Transitions LLC — a boutique executive coaching and organizational change management company.

He is a native of South (Central) Los Angeles, and he is committed to disrupting systems to ensure equity for all communities through data-centered leadership development that moves people, organizations, and initiatives across sectors to solve some of society’s most urgent issues.

Katelyn Choe

February 29, 2024/in Public Policy All Faculty Faculty /by Ronaldo Avina

Katelyn Choe is a U.S. diplomat with 23 years of experience in international relations, government affairs, and leadership management overseeing large, multicultural teams. Some of her previous diplomatic tours include The Netherlands, Afghanistan, Nepal, New Zealand, and South Korea. In her current role as Diplomat in Residence (DIR) for Southern CA, Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands, Katelyn is the primary recruiter for the U.S. Department of State and provides guidance and advice on careers, internships, and fellowships to students and professionals interested in pursuing a career in diplomacy.

Katelyn learned about a career in diplomacy as a Pickering Fellow during her senior year in college and received her Master’s Degree from Columbia University, which was fully funded by the State Department. In her current role as the DIR, she wants to help build a diverse and representative Diplomatic Corps that reflects and represents America, one where diversity and inclusion make us stronger, smarter, and innovative.

Feel free to schedule a meeting with her via her Calendar link.

Wesley Yin

June 30, 2023/in Public Policy Consumer Finance, Economic Development, Economics, Equity, Health Care, Labor and Employment, Public Finance Wesley Yin All Faculty, Ladder Faculty Faculty /by Mary Braswell

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 covered by the New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Forbes, The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, 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.

Working Papers

The Effects of Medical Debt Relief: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments (with Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney and Francis Wong). NBER Working Paper #32315, April 2024. Conditionally accepted at The Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Pre-registrations: J-PAL Summary. AEA Pre-registration 1 (Collector Debt). AEA Pre-registration 2 (Hospital Debt). Media coverage: New York Times, The Guardian, Forbes, St. Louis Public Radio, Bloomberg, Vox, The Atlantic, Vox Today, Explained (Podcast), Tradeoffs (Podcast)

Provider Market Power and Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Markets (with Nicholas Tilipman). Draft available, upon request.

Selected Publications

The Impact of Financial Assistance Programs on Health Care Utilization (with Alyce Adams, Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney, Jinglin Wang, and Francis Wong). American Economic Review: Insights. 4(3), September 2022: 389-407. Online Appendix.

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

Trends in Medical Debt During the COVID Pandemic (with Raymond Kluender, Benedict Guttman-Kenney, Neale Mahoney, Francis Wong, and Xuyang Xia) JAMA Health Forum 3(5):e221031, May 2022.

Medical Debt in the United States, 2009-2020 (with Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney and Francis Wong) Journal of the American Medical Association 326(3), July 2021. 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. (with Richard Domurat and Isaac Menashe) American Economic Review 111(5): 1549–1574 , May 2021. [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

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

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, and 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.

Robert Fairlie

June 27, 2023/in Public Policy Applied Microeconomics, Development, Education, Entrepreneurship, Immigration, Inequality, Information Technology, Labor, Race and Ethnicity All Faculty, Ladder Faculty Faculty /by Ronaldo Avina

I am a Professor of Public Policy and Economics at UCLA, and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). I study a wide range of topics including entrepreneurship, education, labor, racial, gender and caste inequality, information technology, immigration, health, and development. I strive for my research to have a broad impact by providing rigorous, unbiased and objective evidence on questions that are important for society and often involve highly-charged policy debates. My methodological focus is on conducting randomized control field experiments, employing advanced econometric techniques and identification strategies, and working with and building large administrative datasets. Publications from my research have appeared in leading journals in economics, policy, management, science, and medicine.

I received a Ph.D. and M.A. from Northwestern University and B.A. with honors from Stanford University. I have held visiting positions at Stanford University, Yale University, UC Berkeley, and Australian National University. I have received funding for my research from the National Science Foundation, National Academies and Russell Sage Foundation as well as numerous government agencies and foundations, and have testified in front of the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Department of Treasury, and the California State Assembly. Recent awards and honors include a joint resolution from the California State Assembly, Choice Academic Title award, and the Bradford-Osborne research award in both 2020 and 2021. I am regularly interviewed by the media to comment on economic, education, entrepreneurship, inequality and policy issues.

My new book on entrepreneurship, job creation and survival just came out at MIT Press.

For more information on my research, teaching, and policy work, please visit: https://rfairlie.sites.luskin.ucla.edu/

Megan Mullin

January 17, 2023/in Public Policy American Politics, Climate Change, Environmental Justice, Environmental Politics, Local Government, Political Economy, Public Opinion, Urban Politics, Water Policy All Faculty, Ladder Faculty Faculty /by Ronaldo Avina

Megan Mullin is Professor of Public Policy and holds the Luskin Endowed Chair in Innovation and Sustainability at UCLA. She is Faculty Director of the Luskin Center for Innovation, which partners with civic leaders on research to advance equitable public policy addressing environmental challenges.

Mullin is a political scientist whose research examines how coordination problems, accountability failure, and inequality in environmental risks and benefits shape political response to environmental change. Recent projects focus on the governance and finance of urban water services, public opinion about climate change, and the local politics of climate adaptation. She also has published on federalism, election rules and voter turnout, and local and state institutional design.

Mullin’s work has appeared in Nature, Science, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and other journals in political science, public administration, and planning. She is the recipient of five awards from the American Political Science Association, including the Lynton Keith Caldwell Award for her book, Governing the Tap: Special District Governance and the New Local Politics of Water (MIT Press, 2009). Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Geological Survey, and private foundations. She works regularly with policy makers, and her research and commentary have appeared in many national and international media outlets. In 2020, she was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.

Mullin received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. She served on the faculties at Temple University and Duke University prior to joining UCLA in 2023.

Siddharth Kara

December 21, 2022/in Public Policy Child Labor, Mining, Sex Trafficking, Slavery All Faculty Faculty /by Mary Braswell

Siddharth Kara is an author, researcher and activist on modern slavery. Over the past two decades, Kara has conducted ground research in more than 50 countries to personally document the cases of several thousand slaves and child laborers.

In addition to several academic reports and journal articles, Kara has published three books with Columbia University Press: “Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery” (2008); “Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia” (2012); and “Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective” (2017). “Sex Trafficking” earned the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, awarded to the best book written in English on slavery or abolition, and was later turned into the Hollywood movie “Trafficked.”

Kara’s fourth book, “Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives,” was released by St Martin’s Press in January 2023. The book documents Kara’s research on cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cobalt is used in the batteries of almost every mobile phone, tablet, laptop and electric vehicle made today, with almost 75% of the global supply of cobalt being mined in the Congo under appalling conditions. A feature film inspired by “Cobalt Red” is currently in preproduction.

Tierra Bills

February 4, 2022/in Public Policy Redesigning Transportation Systems, Transit Design and Reliability, Transportation Accessibility, Transportation Equity All Faculty, Ladder Faculty Faculty /by Ervin Huang

Tierra S. Bills is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. She specializes in the evaluation of transportation planning and system outcomes, and travel demand modeling, with a special emphasis on transportation equity. Dr. Bills brings a unique and innovative perspective to the challenge of transportation inequity, aimed at impacting transportation science, practice, and quality of life for vulnerable communities. She has worked in the transportation equity domain since 2009 and her current work builds off this track record, including her master’s research, dissertation work, study and training as a Research Scientist at IBM Research, Michigan Society Fellowship research, and previous work as a former Assistant Professor at Wayne State University.

Dr. Bills has extensive training in travel demand modeling and is engaged in ongoing work on representation of transport vulnerable travelers, in household travel surveys. These travel surveys are traditionally used to estimate and validate travel demand models and this is a pathway to developing travel models capable of reflecting the needs and behaviors of disadvantaged travelers and fine-grain transportation equity outcomes. Dr. Bills also works to advance accessibility measurement for transportation project evaluation, and develops strategies for ranking alternative transportation plans using equity-based criteria.

At UCLA, Dr. Bills directs the Transportation Equity Innovation (TrEI) Lab, and leads a team of graduate and undergraduate students in developing innovative, meaningful, and effective tools for assessing fairness in transportation infrastructure, systems, and policies. Dr. Bills is also affiliated with the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, UCLA Bunche Center, and collaborates with students, faculty, and researchers across engineering, policy, planning and other disciplines. Her team’s work is published in a range of journals including Transport Policy, Transportation Research Part D, Transportation, and Transportation Research Record.

Selected Publications

Srisan, T., & Bills, T. (2024). A Case for Race and Space in Auto Ownership Modeling: a Los Angeles County study. Transport Policy. (Link)

Bills, T. S. (2022). Advancing the Practice of Regional Transportation Equity Analysis: a San Francisco Bay area case study. Transportation, 1-26. (Link)

Bills, T. S., Twumasi-Boakye, R., Broaddus, A., & Fishelson, J. (2022). Towards transit equity in Detroit: An assessment of microtransit and its impact on employment accessibility. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 109, 103341. (Link)

Bills, T. S., & Carrel, A. L. (2021). Transit accessibility measurement considering behavioral adaptations to reliability. Transportation research record, 2675(5), 265-278. (Link)

Bills, T. S., & Walker, J. L. (2017). Looking beyond the mean for equity analysis: Examining distributional impacts of transportation improvements. Transport Policy, 54, 61-69. (Link)

Bills, T. S., Sall, E. A., & Walker, J. L. (2012). Activity-based travel models and transportation equity analysis: Research directions and exploration of model performance. Transportation research record, 2320(1), 18-27. (Link)

Sherod Thaxton

July 13, 2021/in Public Policy Crime, Criminal Justice, Law and Society, Quantitative Analysis, Race and Ethnicity All Faculty Faculty /by Ervin Huang

Sherod Thaxton is Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, and former Faculty Director of the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. He also holds secondary appointments in the Department of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and in the Departments of African American Studies and Sociology at the UCLA College of Letters and Sciences. Professor Thaxton teaches Business Crime, Capital Punishment, Criminal Adjudication, Criminal Law, Federal White Collar Crime, Habeas Corpus and Introduction to Legal Analysis. His scholarships centers on quantitative empirical legal studies, with a substantive focus on criminal law, criminal procedure, and the sociology of crime and punishment. Prior to joining UCLA, he taught at the University of Chicago Law School and worked as a federal public defender in Northern California.

After receiving his undergraduate degree in political science from the University of California at Davis, Professor Thaxton enrolled in the sociology program at Emory University and studied under the direction of Robert Agnew. While pursuing his graduate studies, he was the principal investigator of the Death Penalty Tracking Project for the Office of the Multi-County Public Defender in Atlanta, Georgia. At Emory, he earned his master’s and doctoral degrees—specializing in criminology and social psychology. He received his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics, an Academy of Achievement student honoree, and a Public Interest Law Prize recipient. He was also an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and the University of Chicago Legal Forum. Prior to law school, he was a Soros Justice Postgraduate Fellow at the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation and a Law and Social Science Doctoral Fellow at the American Bar Foundation.

Bibliography
Articles and Chapters

Shrinking the Accountability Deficit in Capital Charging, in Oxford Handbook of Prosecutors, 565 (edited by Russell Gold, Kay Levine & Ronald Wright, Oxford University Press, 2021). Full Text

How Not to Lie About Affirmative Action, 67 UCLA Law Review 834 (2020). Full Text

Metrics of Mayhem: Quantifying Capriciousness in Capital Cases, in The Eighth Amendment and its Future in a New Age of Punishment, 266 (edited by Meghan Ryan & Will Berry, Cambridge University Press, 2020). Full Text

Reexamining the Link between Parental Knowledge and Delinquency: Unpacking the Influence of Adolescents’ and Parents’ Perceptions (with Heather Scheuerman & Jessica Grosholz), 40 Deviant Behavior 703 (2019). Full Text

When Criminal Coping is Likely: An Examination of Conditioning Effects in General Strain Theory (with Robert Agnew), 34 Journal of Quantitative Criminology 887 (2018). Full Text

Disentangling Disparity: Exploring Racially Disparate Effect and Treatment in Capital Charging, 45 American Journal of Criminal Law 95 (2018). Full Text

Disciplining Death: Assessing and Ameliorating Arbitrariness in Capital Charging, 49 Arizona State Law Journal 137 (2017). Full Text

Race, Place, and Capital Charging in Georgia, 67 Mercer Law Review 529 (2016). Full Text

Un-Gregg-ulated: Capital Charging and the Missing Mandate of Gregg V. Georgia, 11 Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy 145 (2016). Full Text

Leveraging Death, 103 Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 475 (2013). Full Text

Does Victimization Reduce Self-Control? A Longitudinal Analysis (with Robert Agnew, Jessica Grosholz, Deena Isom, Heather Scheuerman, and Lesley Watson), 39 Journal of Criminal Justice 169 (2011). Full Text

Do Frustrated Economic Expectations and Objective Economic Inequity Promote Crime? A Randomized Experiment Testing Agnew’s General Strain Theory (with Nicole Leeper-Piquero, Alex R. Piquero, and Cesar J. Rebellon), 6 European Journal of Criminology 47 (2009). Full Text

A General Strain Theory of Racial Differences in Criminal Offending (with Robert Agnew, Joanne M. Kaufman, and Cesar J. Rebellon), 41 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 421 (2008). Full Text

Determining ‘Reasonableness’ without a Reason? Federal Appellate Review Post-Rita v. United States, 75 University of Chicago Law Review 1885 (2008). Full Text

The Nonlinear Effects of Parental and Teacher Attachment on Delinquency: Disentangling Strain from Social Control Explanations (with Robert Agnew), 21 Justice Quarterly 763 (2004). Full Text

A General Strain Theory Approach to Families and Delinquency (with Robert Agnew and Cesar J. Rebellon), in Families, Crime and Criminal Justice, (edited by Greer L. Fox and Michael L. Benson, JAI Press, 2000). Full Text

Jasmine D. Hill

July 8, 2021/in Public Policy Families, Labor Markets, Poverty, Racial Inequality, Social Mobility All Faculty, Ladder Faculty Faculty /by Ervin Huang

Jasmine D. Hill is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a sociologist whose scholarship focuses on racial inequality and social mobility for Black Americans. Her current work explores the mechanisms that lift communities of color out of poverty and the ramifications of upward mobility for Black families. Jasmine’s scholarship has been published in top journals such as Social Problems, Teaching Sociology, The Journal of Cultural Economy, and in 2017 she co-edited Inequality in the 21st Century with David B. Grusky (Westview Press). As a publicly engaged scholar, she’s also authored several influential research briefs for policymakers, surveying topics like race, intimate partner violence, and tactics to eliminate extreme poverty.

Her scholarly contributions have been recognized and awarded by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the American Sociological Association, and the Stanford Center for the Comparative Study of Race & Ethnicity. Because of her expertise on matters related to race, inequality, and the labor market, Jasmine is regularly called to design and evaluate anti-racism initiatives with organizations like the Annenberg Foundation, Blue Shield of California Foundation, University of California Students Association, and numerous corporate partners like Soylent, Dollar Shave Club and PocketWatch.

Her work and advocacy have garnered attention from TIME Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and Cheddar News. Jasmine maintains an active speaking, facilitating, and training schedule – working with universities, foundations, nonprofit organizations, and corporations to increase racial equity in our economy. She received her B.A. in Communication Studies from UCLA and she holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University. More information can be found at jasmine-hill.com.

Term	Course	Location	Level
Winter 2023	Qualitative Methods	UCLA Public Policy	Graduate-Level
Spring 2023	Labor Policy and Racial Inequality	UCLA Public Policy	Graduate-Level