Zarek Brot-Goldberg is an assistant professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, as well as a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an affiliate of the HMR Lab at Harvard University and Gilbert Center at the University of California, Berkeley. He studies antitrust and regulatory policy in U.S. healthcare. Some of his current research examines the anticompetitive effects of hospital mergers, the ramifications of prior authorization rules in Medicare Part D, and the differences in beneficiary composition and utilization between Medicare Advantage and Traditional Medicare. He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 2019 and spent the 2019–2020 academic year as a postdoctoral researcher at the Tobin Center for Economic Policy at Yale University. His research has been published in top economics journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the American Economic Review. He won the 2018 National Institute for Health Care Management Research Award for his study on the inefficiency of high-deductible health insurance plans.
Expert Type: Grantee
Andres Drenik
Andres Drenik is an economist specializing in macroeconomics and international finance. He is currently an assistant professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, Drenik was an assistant professor at Columbia University, a visiting scholar at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and a visitor at Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance. His research focuses on a range of topics, including pricing behavior in foreign currency in emerging economies, the impact of currency choice in domestic contracts on optimal monetary policy, and the redistributive effects of exchange rate policies. His recent research on macro-labor economics explores the dynamics of labor markets after nominal devaluations, the international price of remote work, and the effects of wage rigidities on labor market flows. Drenik earned his B.A. and M.A. in economics from Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina in 2006 and went on to complete his Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University in 2016.
Christian Moser
Christian Moser is an assistant professor within the Economics Division at Columbia University Business School and an affiliated faculty member within the Department of Economics at Columbia University. He is also a research affiliate at the Center for Economic Policy Research and a research fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics. Previously, Moser was a senior economist within the Research Division and a visiting scholar at the Opportunity & Inclusive Growth Institute at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, a research associate at the Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute at the University of Minnesota, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, a daily visitor at the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics at Yale University, and a visitor at the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance. Moser’s research revolves around topics in macroeconomics, labor economics, and public economics, with a focus on income inequality. He has taught related courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Moser received a Ph.D. from the Department of Economics at Princeton University.
Aaron Sojourner
Aaron Sojourner is a labor economist and senior researcher at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. His research focuses on the effects of labor-market institutions on economic productivity and society, policies to promote efficient and equitable development of human capital, and behavioral economic approaches to consumer financial decisions. He serves on the ILR Review international editorial board and received the John T. Dunlop Scholar Award from the Labor and Employment Relations Association. His research won the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences editorial board’s 2020 Cozzarelli Prize for Behavioral and Economic Sciences. Sojourner has a wide range of policy experience and community service. He is a member of the Minnesota State Advisory Council on Early Childhood Care and Education and chairs the Constellation Fund’s Impact Council. Previously, he spent the 2016–2017 academic year in Washington, DC, serving as a senior economist for labor at the Council of Economic Advisers, served on Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges’ Cradle-to-K cabinet, as a member of the Human Capital Research Collaborative’s steering committee, a director of Spring Bank (a community bank in the Bronx and Harlem in New York), and a fellow in the U.S. Senate’s Labor Policy Office. Sojourner completed his Ph.D. in economics at Northwestern University in 2009 and was a pre-doctoral fellow in the university’s Multidisciplinary Program in Education Sciences. He also has an M.A. in public policy analysis from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in history from Yale University. From 2009 to 2022, he worked as a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.
Gabrielle Pepin
Gabrielle Pepin is an economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Her research interests include public economics, labor economics, and public policy. She is especially interested in topics related to tax-and-transfer programs, including child care subsidies, cash assistance, and Unemployment Insurance. In her research, Pepin studies effects of the Child and Dependent Care Credit on paid child care use and parents’ labor market outcomes, as well as implications of its design on caregiving and labor supply incentives. In other work, she estimates effects of time limits and interventions intended to increase application completion within the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Pepin is involved in evaluations of the Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment program for Unemployment Insurance beneficiaries. Her work has been featured in Public Finance Review, Southern Economic Journal, and Journal of Behavioral Public Administration. She was awarded the 2022 Georgescu-Roegen Prize for best academic article published in Southern Economic Journal. Pepin holds a Ph.D. in economics from Michigan State University and a B.S. in mathematical economics from the University of St. Thomas.
David McMillon
David McMillon is an assistant professor of economics at Emory University, where he teaches a newly designed course, The Economics of Systemic Racism. The goal of his work is to use systems thinking to combat systemic discrimination. He draws on his training to explore how features of complex systems can be exploited to amplify the effects of racial equity-focused interventions, for the same reasons they amplify inequities in the status quo. This includes work on the academic achievement, the school-to-prison pipeline, reparations and wealth inequality, and formal models of systemic discrimination. McMillon is also affiliated with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility, and the Samuel Dubois Cook Center for Racial Equity. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. He holds master’s degrees from the University of Michigan in applied mathematics and in industrial and operations engineering, and a bachelor’s degree in mathematical sciences.
Karen Kopecky
Karen Kopecky is an economic and policy adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Her major field of study is macroeconomics with particular interests in inequality, public finance, insurance markets, retirement, health, family, and computational methods for macroeconomic modeling. Kopecky is a visiting scholar of the Economics Department at Emory University. She has been serving as an associate editor at Quantitative Economics since July 2022. Prior to joining the Cleveland Fed in 2023, she was an economist at the Atlanta Fed. She spent 4 years as an assistant professor of economics at the University of Western Ontario. Kopecky received her Ph.D. in economics in 2007 and her master’s degree in economics in 2003, both from the University of Rochester. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and her Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2001.
Svetlozar Nestorov
Svetlozar Nestorov is an associate professor of information systems at Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business. His research interests include data mining, high-performance computing, and web technologies. Nestorov received his undergraduate degrees in computer science and mathematics, his M.S. in computer science, and his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University.
Ivan Rudik
Ivan Rudik is an associate professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. His research focuses on the economics of climate change and the design of climate change and air pollution policies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and B.S. from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Jake Rosenfeld
Jake Rosenfeld is professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis and a resident fellow of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy. His research focuses on the political and economic determinants of inequality in the United States and other advanced democracies. Rosenfeld’s 2014 book, What Unions No Longer Do (Harvard University Press), shows in detail the consequences of organized labor’s decline. His 2021 book, You’re Paid What You’re Worth and Other Myths of the Modern Economy (Harvard University Press), seeks to answer the basic question of who gets what and why? Rosenfeld received his Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology from Princeton University and his bachelor’s degree in sociology from Haverford College.