Department: Public Policy

Joshua Schank

Joshua Schank is a Managing Principal at InfraStrategies, a transportation and financial advisory firm, where he leads a practice focused on innovation, strategic planning, and technology. He is also a Senior Fellow in the Institute for Transportation Studies and an Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Research Associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute.

Prior to joining InfraStrategies and UCLA, Dr. Schank was the first-ever Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro). Dr. Schank joined Metro in 2015 to establish the agency’s Office of Extraordinary Innovation (OEI), which is responsible for fostering innovations that improve mobility, equity and environmental outcomes across LA County. Dr. Schank led an office that shaped Metro’s high-level strategic vision, serving as a liaison to the academic community, designing, piloting and implementing innovative programs and policies, and engaging entrepreneurs and businesses to develop public-private-partnerships. Dr. Schank helped create and lead numerous transformative Metro projects including the Vision 2028 Strategic Plan, Metro Micro, Mobility on Demand, Metro’s Traffic Reduction Study, Better Bus, two Pre-Development Agreements for the Sepulveda Transit Corridor, a Public-Private-Partnership for the West Santa Ana Branch, and an aerial tram from Union Station to Dodger Stadium.

Dr. Schank previously served as President and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, a leading national transportation policy think-tank based in Washington, D.C. Prior to that he led the National Transportation Policy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center and has worked as a consultant for Parsons Brinkerhoff (now WSP) and ICF International. Dr. Schank served as Transportation Policy Advisor to Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) during the authorization of SAFETEA-LU and is the co-author of All Roads Lead to Congress: The $300 Billion Fight Over Highway Funding. Dr. Schank holds a Ph.D in Urban Planning from Columbia University, and a Master of City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began his career working on behalf of the riders of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City and has never lost that spirit. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons.

Selected Publications

Panagopoulous, C. & Schank, J. (2007). All Roads Lead to Congress: The $300 Billion Fight Over Highway Funding. CQ Press.

How to Imagine a Los Angeles Without Traffic: The City Has the Solutions to Congestion, Pollution, and Accidents—We Just Need to Use Them

Partnerships with Technology-Enabled Mobility Companies: Lessons Learned

Microtransit: A Good Idea Just Got Even Better

Free Transit: It All Depends on How

Transportation Equity – Says Who?

America’s Highways, Running on Empty

Air traffic control shouldn’t be a government responsibility

Isaac Opper

September 10, 2025/in Public Policy Applied Microeconomics, Econometrics, Education, Labor Economics All Faculty, Ladder Faculty Faculty /by Ronaldo Avina

Isaac M. Opper is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is an applied microeconomist, who uses and develops a range of empirical techniques to shed light on important policy-relevant questions. Much of his work combines quasi-experimental variation with either economic theory or novel econometric techniques to better understand the full policy implications of educational interventions. His work has been published in academic journals (e.g., American Economic Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Econometrics, Nature Human Behavior, and PNAS), written about in popular media (e.g., New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Barrons), and cited by policy makers.

Prior to joining UCLA, he worked at RAND where he also conducted studies on a wide range of topics, including a number of reports on how the U.S. Army can best recruit, develop, employ, and retain talent. Dr. Opper received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and his bachelor’s degree from Colby College.

For more information, please visit his personal website at https://sites.google.com/site/isaacopper/.

Carlo Medici

September 10, 2025/in Public Policy Applied Microeconomics, Economic Development, Economic History, Economics, Immigration, Labor Economics, Labor Unions, Political Economy, Race and Ethnicity Public Policy All Faculty, Ladder Faculty Faculty /by Ronaldo Avina

Carlo Medici is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He is an applied microeconomist working in the areas of labor economics, political economy, and economic history. His research examines the economics of immigration, labor market institutions, and public sector organizations, drawing on both contemporary and historical contexts. He studies these questions empirically, leveraging administrative records, newly digitized archival datasets, and publicly available microdata.

Before joining UCLA, Carlo was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2024, and holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Bocconi University.

More information about his work can be found at carlomedici.com.

Daniel J. Benjamin

September 8, 2025/in Public Policy Behavioral Economics, Social-Science Genomics, Survey-Based Measurement of Well-Being All Faculty Faculty /by Ronaldo Avina

I am a Professor in the Behavioral Decision Making Area at the Anderson School of Management and in the Human Genetics Department at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. My research is in behavioral economics, which incorporates ideas and methods from psychology into economic analysis, and genoeconomics, which incorporates genetic data into economics.

Some current research topics include understanding errors people make in statistical reasoning; exploring how best to use survey measures of subjective well-being (such as happiness and life satisfaction) to track national well-being and evaluate policies; and studying genetic predictors for behavioral and social phenotypes such as educational attainment and subjective well-being. Past work has addressed how economic behavior relates to cognitive ability and social identity (ethnicity, race, gender, and religion).

I earned my Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and was a postdoc at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Before coming to UCLA, I held faculty positions in the Economics Department at Cornell University and at the Center for Economic and Social Research and Economics Department at the University of Southern California. I am also a Faculty Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

For more information about my work, check out my website: danieljbenjamin.com

Wesley Yin

April 15, 2025/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.

Yin’s research focuses on health care, consumer finance, and economic inequality. His recent work studies competition and market power, 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 2023-24, Yin served in the Biden Administration as Associate Director for Economic Policy, and Chief Economist, in the Office of Management and Budget. Previously, he served in the Obama Administration as Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy in the Department of the Treasury, and as Senior Economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

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

Provider Market Power and Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Markets: Evidence from the California Health Benefits Exchange (with Nicholas Tilipman). Draft available, upon request.

Selected Publications

The Effects of Medical Debt Relief: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments (with Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney and Francis Wong). The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 140(2): May 2025, 1187–1241. NBER Working Paper version (WP#32315, April 2024).

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)

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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)