Micah Villarreal is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In her research, she seeks to understand the historical roots of present-day inequality in the United States. Her dissertation exploits a natural experiment in early 1900s Oklahoma to learn about the causes of racial wealth inequality. Previously, Villarreal worked on housing and labor policy research at Abt Associates. She holds a B.A. in international relations and economics from Wellesley College.
Expert Type: Grantee
Neil Cholli
Neil Cholli is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University’s Department of Economics. His primary fields of research are labor and public economics. Cholli’s work leverages applied microeconomic methods guided by theory to understand the mechanisms of social mobility and evaluate policies aimed at promoting it. He received his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago in 2022 as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and an Institute of Education Sciences Pre-Doctoral Fellow. His dissertation has been recognized by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management and the National Tax Association.
Dmitri Koustas
Dmitri Koustas is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. His research spans labor economics, public economics, macroeconomics, and household finance, with a particular focus on the future of work. In particular, his research measuring and understanding participation in the gig economy has helped inform the policy discussion around gig work, future survey design, and tax administration. In addition to academic publications, his research has been featured in the National Academy of Sciences report on “Measuring Alternative Work Arrangements for Research and Policy,” in multiple editions of the White House Council of Economic Advisers’ Economic Report of the President, and in major media outlets. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2018.
Margarita Tsoutsoura
Margarita Tsoutsoura is an associate professor of finance at Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and a research member at the European Corporate Governance Institute. She serves as associate editor of the Journal of Finance, The Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Review of Finance. Tsoutsoura was formerly a tenured associate professor at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University and associate professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on corporate finance with an emphasis on privately held firms, corporate governance, and labor and finance. Her work has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies. The Fulbright Fellowship, the Jensen Prize, the Wharton School-WRDS Award, and the WFA Trefftzs Award are among Tsoutsoura’s other varied honors and fellowships. Her research has been covered extensively in popular media outlets, including in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Economist, New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, BusinessWeek, the International Herald Tribune, and CNBC. She received her Ph.D. in economics and finance from Columbia University.
Adam Isen
Adam Isen is an associate professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University. Previously, he worked for 10 years at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. His research interests are in labor and public economics. In his work, Isen studies the effect of government policy on households and firms and the causal pathways that give rise to inequality and intergenerational mobility. He received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Alejandra Ros Pilarz
Alejandra Ros Pilarz is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work. Her research agenda aims to improve the well-being of working families with low-incomes through policy-relevant research. Her research examines the effects of parental employment and children’s early care and education contexts on family well-being and children’s development. She also examines how public policies shape parents’ employment, children’s early care and education contexts, and, ultimately, influence child and family well-being. Pilarz received her A.M. and Ph.D. from the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and her B.A. in psychology from the University of Notre Dame.
Amy Claessens
Amy Claessens is a professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the Carl and Mary Gulbrandsen Distinguished Chair in Early Childhood Education and the associate director of the Center for Research on Early Childhood Education. Her research focuses on improving the well-being of families and young children in a variety of contexts, including child care and the early years of school. Her research has been funded by a wide range of agencies, including the Administration for Children and Families and the Heising-Simons Foundation. Claessens has a Ph.D. in human development and social policy from Northwestern University.
Seula Kim
Seula Kim is a postdoctoral research associate in the Louis A. Simpson Center for the Study of Macroeconomics and the Department of Economics at Princeton University. In the fall of 2024, she will join Pennsylvania State University as an assistant professor of economics. Her primary research areas include macroeconomics, firm dynamics, innovation, and economic growth. Her research explores various aspects of firm dynamics and their implications for economic growth and inequality by using quantitative heterogeneous-agent macroeconomic models with micro-level administrative and survey data. Specifically, her recent work focuses on understanding how workers’ uncertain job prospects impact the wages and growth of young firms and contribute to business dynamism and productivity growth at the aggregate level. In addition, she is actively involved in research related to the trends and determinants of firm innovation and their role in economic growth, as well as the impact of spatial variations in market structures on inequality. Kim received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland in 2023 and holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in economics from Seoul National University.
Alaa Abdelfattah
Alaa Abdelfattah is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of California, Davis. Her research interests meet at the intersection of monopsony power, public policy, and skill-driven income inequality. More specifically, she studies the effect of public policy and aggregate market shocks on skill demand and wage distribution in local labor markets. The main chapter of her dissertation examines the spillover effects of government-subsidized million-dollar projects on incumbent firms’ skill demand and posted wages. Other ongoing work examines the effect of COVID-19-induced labor shortages and the federal contractor minimum wage on employers’ skill demand and wage distribution. Abdelfattah received her B.A. in economics from Middlebury College and her M.A. in economics from the University of California, Davis.
Stuart Craig
Stuart Craig is an assistant professor of risk and insurance at the University of Wisconsin School of Business. His research focuses primarily on the causes and consequences of rising healthcare spending, with a focus on competition and price-setting in business-to-business healthcare markets. Craig’s past work has examined horizontal mergers and other sources of pricing power in markets for medical supplies, hospital services, and employer-sponsored insurance premiums. Craig completed his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in 2021. From 2021–2023, he was a postdoctoral associate at Yale University’s Tobin Center for Economic Policy.