Jonathan Garita is a research economist at the Central Bank of Costa Rica and lecturer at the University of Costa Rica. His research interests lie in the intersection between macroeconomics, labor, and industrial organization. His recent work investigates the effect of minimum wage policies on firms. Garita completed his BSc. in economics from the University of Costa Rica, and his MSc. and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas at Austin.
Expert Type: Grantee
Joanna Venator
Joanna Venator is an assistant professor at Boston College. She earned her Ph.D. in economics at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on how gender and family structure interact with human capital formation and labor market outcomes. Venator’s dissertation focuses on how married couples make decisions about where to work and live, the gender differences in post-move labor market outcomes, and the role that social welfare programs, such as Unemployment Insurance, play in dual-earner households’ migration decisions. In addition to her work on dual-earner migration, Venator has published papers exploring the impacts of pollution on educational outcomes, the effects of abortion clinic closures on fertility outcomes, and gender differences in college major choice. She is a graduate student affiliate of UW-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty, the Center for Demography and Ecology, and the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity. She earned her B.A. in economics and psychology from Swarthmore College.
Michele Cadigan
Michele Cadigan is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Washington. Cadigan’s work brings together theoretical frameworks from economic sociology, law and society, and criminal justice research to understand the complex relationship between markets and the criminal justice system, paying particular attention to how these relationships both shape and are shaped by race and ethnicity. Her current work, “Cannabis-infused dreams: A market at the crossroads of criminal and conventional,” draws on both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to understand how racial equity is constructed in legalized recreational cannabis markets. Specifically, she takes an in-depth look into state-sanctioned recreational cannabis markets in three U.S. cities to examine how different approaches to racial equity transform market spaces and market actors’ experiences to either reinforce or disrupt economic inequality. She received her M.A. in sociology from the University of Washington and her B.S. in sociology and Chicanx and Latinx studies from California State University, Long Beach.
Geoffrey Schnorr
Geoffrey Schnorr is a postdoctoral scholar in economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He completed his PhD in Economics at the University of California, Davis in September 2021. His primary research areas are empirical public finance and labor economics, where he studies safety net and social insurance programs. His work aims to understand the complex effects of social program design on recipient behavior, improve the implementation of these programs, and help program recipients avoid or escape poverty. Schnorr also studies topics in health economics, with a focus on health behaviors. He earned his M.A. in economics from Hunter College, City University of New York, and his B.S. in healthcare management and policy at Georgetown University.
Michael Hout
Michael Hout is professor of sociology at New York University. His research uses demographic methods to study social change in inequality, religion, and politics in developed and developing countries. For much of his career, he has been involved with the General Social Survey, as chair of the Board of Overseers and co-principal investigator on the National Science Foundation grant that funds the General Social Survey. His current work uses GSS data to study changing occupational hierarchies. In other projects, he is working on heterogeneity in returns to higher education and long-term trends in public opinion. With NYU colleague Xiaogang Wu, he has just launched a survey of social life during the COVID-19 pandemic, replicating Wu's study of Wuhan, China. Hout was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003, where he now chairs the advisory board for the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Hout earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University, and his M.A. and B.A. in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh.
Cliff Robb
Cliff A. Robb is an associate professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the faculty director for the personal finance program in the School of Human Ecology. His research interests include financial decision-making (with an emphasis on the relationship between financial knowledge and observable financial behavior), college student financial behavior, and financial satisfaction and well-being. Robb has published more than 30 peer-reviewed academic papers on a variety of topics, and he serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Financial Planning, the Journal of Consumer Affairs, and the Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning. Robb earned his Ph.D. in personal financial planning from the University of Missouri-Columbia, his M.S. in consumer economics from the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa, and his B.A. in psychology from the University of the South.
Douglas Wolf
Douglas Wolf is a professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs, a senior research associate at the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion, and a faculty associate at the Aging Studies Institute at the university. He is a demographer, policy analyst, program evaluator, and gerontological researcher who studies the economic, demographic, and social aspects of aging, disability, and long-term care. Wolf’s professional experience includes an appointment as an economist in the Office of Income Security of at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), and several years at the Urban Institute. Wolf also spent two years as a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria. A primary theme of Wolf’s research is the role of public policy and of family and kinship patterns in shaping the choices facing older people and their immediate kin with respect to living and care arrangements. He earned his B.A. in sociology and a Ph.D. in public policy analysis from the University of Pennsylvania.
Kanika Arora
Kanika Arora is an associate professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on gerontology with a special emphasis on informal caregiving, cannabis use among older adults, end-of-life outcomes, and Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia. She has examined the effect of several policies and programs, including paid family leave, legalization of medical marijuana, managed care, and consolidation of state area agencies on aging, on older adult and caregiver outcomes. Her recent work examines dementia prevalence and trajectories of cognitive functioning among agricultural workers, outcomes among senior and disabled individuals under Medicaid managed care, and the effect of a dementia onset on change in risky behaviors (such as smoking and alcohol use) among older adults. She completed her Ph.D. in public administration from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
Stefan Pichler
Stefan Pichler is an associate professor of public health at the Department of Economics, Econometrics and Finance at the University of Groningen (Netherlands). Prior to that, he was a senior researcher at the KOF institute at ETH Zürich in Switzerland. His research is in the field of applied health and labor economics. His research on sick leave has been featured by several news outlets and cited as a reason for the Healthy Families Act and the FFCRA emergency sick leave provision. He completed his doctoral studies at the Graduate School of Finance Economics and Management and earned his Ph.D. in 2013 at the Technische Universität Darmstad in Germany.
Nicolas R. Ziebarth
Nicolas R. Ziebarth is an associate professor in the Department for Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. He studies the interaction of social insurance systems with labor markets and population health. In particular, he is an international expert on the economics of sick leave and has published numerous refereed journal articles on the topic. Another focus of his work is the driving forces and implications of risky health behavior such as smoking, drinking, or overeating. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Berlin Institute of Technology.