Research Affiliates and Fellows

Associate Director, CHEPS

Yang Liang | San Diego State University

Yang Liang is an Associate Professor of Economics and Associate Director for the Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies at San Diego State University. Liang is an applied microeconomist with research interests in public policy analysis across the fields of health, labor, and international economics. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Health Economics, the Journal of Applied Econometrics, the Journal of Population Economics, and the Review of International Economics. Liang received his Ph.D. in Economics from Syracuse University in 2018.

 

Chief of Staff and Constable, CHEPS - Economics of Crime Research Division

Kyutaro Matsuzawa | San Diego State University

Kyu Matsuzawa is an Assistant Professor of Economics at SDSU and the Chief of Staff and Constable of CHEPS’s new Economics of Crime Research Division. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s from SDSU and his PhD from the University of Oregon, and has been a long-time CHEPS affiliate. He is an applied microeconomist with a specific interest in the economics of crime and health economics. His current research topic includes police traffic stops, sports gambling legalization, and the state of Oregon’s drug decriminalization law. His work has been published in several leading economics journals, including the Journal of Human Resources, the Journal of Law and Economics, and the Journal of Applied Econometrics.

 

Postdoctoral Affiliates

Jooyoung Kim | San Diego State University

Jooyoung Kim is a Postdoctoral Affiliate at San Diego State University’s Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies (CHEPS). His research intersets span labor, health, and urban economics. Prior to joining CHEPS, he was a visiting faculty member at St. Lawrence University. Jooyoung received his Ph. D. in Economics from Syracuse University in 2024, where he was a Graduate Research Associate at the Maxwell School’s Center for Policy Research.

Tessie Krishna | San Diego State University

Tessie Krishna is a Postdoctoral Affiliate in Economics at the Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies (CHEPS) at San Diego State University. Tessie is currently on the job market during AY 2025-2026. Her research interests lie in the fields of crime & risky behaviors, health, and labor economics. She earned her Ph.D. in Economics from Rutgers University, where she served as a research assistant to Dr. Amanda Agan and as a course instructor. She has also held teaching appointments as a preceptor at Princeton University and gained additional applied policy experience as a data analyst intern with the Office of the Assistant Attorney General in the New Jersey Division of Law’s Affirmative Civil Rights & Labor Enforcement Section. Dr. Krishna holds master’s degrees in Economics from both Rutgers University and the University of Texas at Austin, as well as an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode.

Nikolaos Prodromidis | San Diego State University

Nikolaos Prodromidis is a Postdoctoral Affiliate in Economics at the Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies (CHEPS) at San Diego State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Duisburg-Essen. His research interests include health economics, labor economics, and economic history.

Eduardo Ignacio Polo-Muro | University of the Basque Country

Eduardo Ignacio Polo-Muro, Ph.D. is a lecturer in the Department of Economics at San Diego State University and a Research Affiliate at the Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies (CHEPS). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of the Basque Country (2021), where he also completed a postdoctoral fellowship. Eduardo has held research positions at the University Pablo de Olavide and was a Postdoctoral Visiting Scholar at the University of California, San Diego (2022-2024). He is a member of the BIRTE research group. His research focuses on the interplay between public policy and labor markets, with particular attention to health, immigration, and household consumption.

 

Faculty Affiliates

Audrey Beck | San Diego State University

Audrey Beck is an Associate Professor of Sociology at San Diego State University. She received her B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles and her Ph.D. in sociology with specializations in demography and stratification from Duke University. Following graduation, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Office of Population Research and Center for Research on Child Wellbeing at Princeton University. While there, her primary focus was the impact of union formation and dissolution on child health, parenting, and child school readiness. She first came to San Diego State University as a postdoctoral research associate before joining the Sociology Department as an Assistant Professor in 2015. Her work uses a variety of demographic methods to understand race, ethnic, and nativity disparities in health. Recent work, with colleagues at USC, explores a) the impact of neighborhood economic conditions and crime on birth outcomes and b) the collection of police-involved death data and the contextual and policy correlates of such deaths. Dr. Beck has received a number of grants and fellowships and has published her research in Demography, Social Science and Medicine, Journal of Gerontology, Social Science Quarterly, American Journal of Public Health, Sociology of Education, and the Journal of Marriage and Family, among others.

 

Ed Balsdon | San Diego State University

Ed Balsdon joined the SDSU faculty in 2000 after earning a Ph.D. in Economics from UC Santa Barbara. His scholarly work specializing in natural resource economics, public finance, and behavioral responses to risk has appeared in Land Economics, the Journal of Urban Economics, the National Tax Journal, and other publications. He has served as the SDSU Associate Dean of Graduate & Research Affairs from 2014–2020 and the Interim Dean of Graduate Studies from 2020-2021. During this administrative period, he contributed economic analysis to a large NSF grant project examining coastal flood risk in California. Ed rejoined the SDSU Economics Department in Fall 2021.

Prashant Bharadwaj | University of California, San Diego 

Prashant Bharadwaj is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.  Prashant’s research interests are in development and labor economics, focusing on the interactions between early childhood health, gender, and education. He is also a Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and holds research affiliations at the Center for Effective Global Action, the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research.  Prashant is co-editor at the Journal of Human Resources and an associate editor at the Journal of Development Economics.

Cal Bryan | Washington & Lee University

Cal Bryan is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Washington & Lee University. He received a B.S. in Bioenvironmental Sciences from Texas A&M University in 2013, an M.A. in Economics from San Diego State University in 2020, and a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics from Colorado State University in 2024. His dissertation focused on using economic tools to evaluate the efficiency and equity of wildfire suppression strategies. His current research focuses on evaluating the efficiency of the Federal Crop Insurance Program, developing strategies to reduce wildfire risk before it occurs, and estimating the economic spillovers of wildfire suppression efforts. His broader research agenda examines how individuals and institutions respond to environmental and climate risks, with a focus on natural disaster management, forest resource protection, and the use of microeconomic and geospatial tools to evaluate the sustainability, effectiveness, and equity of environmental policies.

Ryan Brown | University of Colorado Denver

Ryan Brown is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado Denver. His research interests span multiple fields of applied microeconomics including development economics, labor economics, health economics, economic demography, and political economy. Dr. Borwn's work has primarily focused on applying econometric techniques to population representative data in both developed and developing country settings, to examine how changes in the social, physical, and/or economic environment can have a persistent impact on health, preferences, and human capital accumulation. Recently, he has also begun to explore the relationship between the success of women competing for positions in entry-level positions and its subsequent impact on the gender gap at the top of the career ladder.  

Alex Chesney | United States Air Force Academy

Alex Chesney completed his Ph.D. in Economics at UC Davis in 2022 and now works full-time for the United States Air Force in Idaho. He received his master’s degree in Economics from San Diego State University in 2012 and his bachelor’s degree from the United States Air Force Academy in 2011. Alex is interested in Public and Labor Economics and studying policies that impact military personnel and their dependents. His current research focuses on how active-duty military members make education investment decisions, and how these investments augment human capital formation. Dr. Chesney’s recent research was published in the Economics of Education Review, and another paper is at the revise-and-resubmit stage at the Journal of Public Economics.

Jeffrey Clemens | University of California, San Diego 

Jeffrey Clemens is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research and an affiliate of the Economic Self-Sufficiency Policy Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine.  He is currently an associate editor at the Journal of Health Economics and American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.  He has previously held visiting positions at Stanford University and the University of Texas at Austin.   He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2011 and his B.A. from Harvard College in 2005.

Thiago de Lucena | San Diego State University

Thiago de Lucena is an Assistant Professor in Economics at San Diego State University. He joined the faculty at SDSU after completing his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of California, Davis. He is interested in development economics, labor economics, and political economy. In the field of labor economics, his work seeks to understand the consequences of events that may reduce out-group biases. His work in political economy focuses on government efficiency at the local level.  Thiago is originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and holds a master from the São Paulo School of Economics.  

Hao Fe | San Diego State University

Hao Fe is an Associate Professor of Economics at San Diego State University. Her research combines econometric models with emerging big data sources to create novel causal inference approaches. My areas of interest include child development, education policy, the economics of crime, social networks, and health economics. My recent project implements a newly developed identification strategy to estimate the effect of children’s time allocation on their skill formation. I am currently investigating the causal impact of social networks on consumer behaviors and crime. Her work has been published in the Journal of Applied Econometrics and the Journal of Urban Economics.

Toshio Ferrazares | CUNY Hunter College

Toshio Ferrazares is an Assistant Professor of Economics at CUNY Hunter College as of Fall 2025. He received his M.A. and B.A. in Economics from San Diego State University (SDSU). He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is interested in researching macroeconomics, labor, and public finance. His work has been published in the Journal of Urban Economics and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

Zach Fone | United States Air Force Academy

Zach Fone is an Assistant Professor and Analyst for the Office of Labor and Economic Analysis (OLEA) at the United States Air Force Academy. He is helping to build OLEA’s profile as a trusted and respected source of military manpower analysis and labor economics research more broadly. His research interests span the economics of crime and punishment, sports economics, labor economics, and health economics. His work has been published in the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Law and Economics, and the Journal of Sports Economics. Zach received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of New Hampshire and has been a CHEPS Research Affiliate since 2017.

Shoshana Grossbard | San Diego State University 

Shoshana Grossbard is Professor Emerita of Economics at San Diego State University and Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics. She is also a member of the Family Inequality Network at the University of Chicago. Shoshana is a leading scholar in the economics of marriage and the family. Her work has been published in such journals as the Journal of Political Economy, the Economic Journal, and the Journal of Population Economics. She served as past-president of the Society of Economics of the Household (SEHO). View Shoshana's CV.

Gokhan Kumpas | California State University Los Angeles

Gokhan Kumpas is an Assistant Professor of Economics at California State University, Los Angeles, where he has taught since Fall 2022. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of New Hampshire in 2021, specializing in health economics and policy analysis. His research spans applied microeconomics, with a focus on health, risky behaviors, crime, and education policy. Dr. Kumpas is a faculty affiliate at the Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies (CHEPS) and Director of the Financial Fitness Program at Cal State LA. He recently served as Co-Principal Investigator with Dr. Joseph J. Sabia on a Social Security Administration–funded grant examining disparities in SSI, SSDI, and OASI participation among LGB and non-LGB populations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Kumpas’s research has been published in leading journals, including the Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Human Resources, and Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and his service and teaching have been recognized with strong departmental praise.

Brandy Lipton | University of California, Irvine

Brandy Lipton is an applied microeconomist specializing in health economics and public policy. Her core interests lie in exploring the connections between health care policies and both health and economic outcomes. The majority of her work leverages state-level variation in Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program policies. For example, recent research has explored the effects of optional benefits in Medicaid on adult health and labor market outcomes. Ongoing work is examining whether adult Medicaid benefits affect outcomes among children of adult enrollees.

After completing her graduate studies in economics at Northwestern University, Lipton spent several years working for health agencies within the federal government. Her work involved analysis of nationally representative household surveys fielded by these agencies to address a variety of health and public policy topics. This work was published in high quality peer-reviewed economics and policy journals including the Journal of Health Economics and Health Affairs.

Lipton is currently a Associate Professor in the Department of Health, Society, and Behavior at the University of California, Irvine and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health at San Diego State University. She is an active participant in the Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies (CHEPS) seminar series, and also sits on the advisory board for the Center.

Jacob Penglase | San Diego State University

Jacob Penglase is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Boston College. Prior to joining SDSU, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bordeaux and an associate economist at Analysis Group. His research focuses on measuring poverty and individual well-being. His past work has examined consumption inequality among children in the context of child fostering in Malawi. More recent research studied the relationship between poverty and household size in Bangladesh. His work has appeared in Economic Journal, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Economic Development and Cultural Change.

Julia Zhu | San Diego State University

Julia Zhu is an Assistant Professor of Economics and CHEPS Faculty Research Fellow at San Diego State University. She is an applied microeconomist. Her research interests are in labor economics, economics of migration, and economics of education. She has several lines of active research that investigate the causes and effects of high-skilled immigration, labor market institutions and inequality, local impacts of immigration enforcement policies, climate change and migration, and attitude formation towards immigrants and racial minorities. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2022. Prior to joining SDSU, she was a postdoctoral fellow in labor economics at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH). Currently, her job market paper is at the revise-and-resubmit stage at the Economic Journal. She has also published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

CHEPS Research Affiliates

Brittany E. Bass | Semel Institute, University of California, Los Angeles

Brittany Bass received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Irvine in 2019. She is currently an Economist for the Integrated Substance Abuse Programs in the Semel Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to joining UCLA, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Sacramento State University. Brittany is a health economist, primarily researching the impact of policies related to substance use disorder treatment on youth and adult health and economic outcomes. Her past research has focused on examining the impact of sex education mandates, maternity leave laws, minimum wages, and technology funding. Brittany's research has appeared in peer-reviewed economics and policy journals including Economics of Education Review, Contemporary Economic Policy, IZA Journal of Labor Policy, and Journal of Population Economics.

Drew McNichols | Amazon

Drew McNichols received his Ph.D. at the University of Oregon. He is an applied microeconomist specializing in labor economics and public economics. His most recent work studies the impact of policies related to gender pay inequality. In other work, he studies topics such as youth criminality and the impacts of marijuana legalization. Drew was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of California San Diego, and the Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies (CHEPS) at San Diego State University.

Caterina Muratori | University of Barcelona

Caterina Muratori is a research affiliate at the University of Barcelona.  She was a postdoctoral filiate at the Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies (CHEPS) at San Diego State University. She received her M.S. from the University of Bologna in 2018 and her Ph.D. from the University of Torino and the University of Reading in 2022. She is an applied microeconomist whose research interests include women's health and abortion access, gender inequalities in the labor market, violence against women, substance use and regulation, and educational inequalities.

 

Student Affilates

M.S. Students

Joaquin Arellanes | San Diego State University

Joaquin Arellanes earned his undergraduate degree in Business Economics from the University of California, Riverside, and is currently a second-year M.S. student in Economics at San Diego State University. At CHEPS, he has gained early experience assisting with data cleaning and supporting preliminary stages of research. Joaquin is interested in applied economics and enjoys learning about the research process. In his free time, he enjoys movies and reading.

Hannah Le | San Diego State University

Hannah Le is a first-year Master's student in Economics at San Diego State University and a predoctoral research assistant with the Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies. In 2025, she graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics/Economics and a minor in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science. Hannah's research interests include energy, environmental, and developmental economics.

Elijah Welton | San Diego State University

Elijah Welton is a first-year Master's student in economics at San Diego State University, and a predoctoral research assistant with the Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies. Welton is interested in applied microeconomics with a focus on labor, education, and health. He graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2025 with Bachelor's degrees in Economics and History.

 

Doctoral Students

Isaac Baumann | University of Illinois-Chicago

Isaac Baumann is a second-year Economics Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He hopes to explore research interests in a variety of applied economics fields, including education, crime, and public economics. Isaac received an M.A. in Economics from San Diego State University in 2021 and was a CHEPS student research assistant from 2019-2020.

Matthew Braaksma | University of Minnesota

Matt Braaksma received his B.A. in Accounting with a minor in Economics from Eastern Washington University and an M.A. in Economics from San Diego State University. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota. His interests include environmental resource economics, natural resource economics, and developmental economics.

Tony Chuo | University of Texas-Austin 

Tony Chuo is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at The University of Texas at Austin.  He completed his M.A. in Economics at San Diego State University in Spring 2025.  At CHEPS, Tony developed his empirical research skills through various projects with The Center, including work on disparities in response to e-cigarette taxation among queer youth, the impacts of e-cigarette taxation on youth and adult body weight, and other ongoing work regarding tobacco control policy effectiveness. He has enjoyed his time at CHEPS and would like to continue in the field of health economics. In his free time, Tony enjoys cooking, photography, music, and going on runs (but his knees do not).

Russell Leonard | University of California, Irvine

Russ Leonard is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at UCI broadly interested in public/urban/labor topics, particularly those involving the internet and its infrastructure. His current work explores user responses to abusive online peers and its measurement, as well as quality competition between legacy and fiber-optic broadband internet providers. He has also co-authored papers on public health insurance and youth risky behaviors. Russ holds a B.A. in economics and philosophy from the University of Colorado-Boulder and an M.A. in economics from San Diego State University. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, fishing, and cooking.

Rebecca Margolit | Cornell University

Rebecca is a second-year Ph.D. student of economics at Cornell University. She is interested in labor, health, and applied Econometrics. Prior to starting her Ph.D., she was a predoctoral research assistant at the University of Notre Dame, and completed her masters degree at SDSU while also working as a CHEPS research assistant.

Alicia Marquez | Cornell University

Alicia Marquez received her B.S. degree in Environmental Science with a minor in Economics and an M.A. degree in Economics from San Diego State University. She is currently attending the Policy Analysis and Management Ph.D. program at Cornell University. She chose this program because of its interdisciplinary nature, with strong faculty in fields ranging from health economics to demography to environmental economics. Her specific interests include natural resource economics, health economics, and public policy.

Diletta Migliaccio | University of Genoa

Diletta Migliaccio is a Ph.D. student in the Economics and Quantitative Methods program at the University of Genoa, where she specializes in health economics. She was a Visiting Doctoral Fellow at CHEPS in Spring 2025. Diletta’s research focuses on vaping and consumer risk perception, with a particular interest in behavioral responses to e-cigarette-related policies. Her work at CHEPS explores how public health interventions shape individual choices in the context of emerging nicotine products.

Cameron Milani | Claremont Graduate University

Cameron Milani received his B.A. in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and his M.A. in economics at San Diego State University. In the fall he will attend Claremont Graduate University. His interests include labor economics, economic development and housing markets.

Christian Pryfogle | University of Oregon

Christian Pryfogle is a first year Ph.D. student in economics at the University of Oregon. Outside of his coursework, he enjoys walking and biking in the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest (unless it is raining). Prior to this, Christian earned both his B.A. and M.S. in economics at San Diego State University. During his master level studies he worked as a pre-doctoral research assistant with CHEPS, contributing primarily to projects related to electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) policies and use. 

Samuel Safford | Michigan State University

Samuel Safford received his B.A. in Applied Economics from California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA), his Master of Arts in Economics at SDSU, then his M.A. in Sociology at Michigan State University. He is currently attending Cornell University’s Ph.D. program in Sociology. His interests include gender and sexuality, methodology, culture and knowledge, and social policy.

Cooper Smiley | University of Georgia

Cooper Smiley received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in Economics from San Diego State University. He is a Ph.D. student in Public Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia in the fall semester and plans to specialize in health policy. His interests include research into substance use disorders, health program planning in developing countries, and partnership development between public and private-sector organizations.