Nirvikar Singh
CAFIN Co-Director
Nirvikar Singh is a Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is an expert on the Indian economy and other emerging markets, and serves on the Indian Finance Minister’s advisory group on G20 matters. Among other topics, he has written several articles about Indian economic reform, economic theory and labor standards and several columns for Indian financial newspapers.
Galina Hale (Borisova)
CAFIN Co-Director
Galina Hale (Borisova) is Professor of Economics at UC Santa Cruz and a Research Advisor (currently on leave) at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Previously she was on the economics faculty at Yale University. She also taught as a visiting faculty at Stanford and UC Berkeley. She received her PhD in economics from UC Berkeley, under the supervision of Barry Eichengreen. Galina’s research interests lie in three main areas: understanding patterns of international capital flows and international financial crises, international banking, and stability of financial networks. In addition, Galina has been recently working on identifying ways to address problems related to climate risks, and on how to make the global food system more sustainable. Galina currently serves as a co-editor of the Russian Journal of Central Banking, associate editor of the Journal of International Economics, and on the editorial boards of the IMF Economic Review and Pacific Economic Review.
Brenda Samaniego de la Parra
Steering Committee
Brenda Samaniego de la Parra is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research analyzes how different work arrangements between workers and firms arise, and their implications for the aggregate economy. She has published research in the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) World of Work and Global Employment Trends reports and has consulted for the ILO and the World Bank. Before joining the Economics Department at UC Santa Cruz, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and served as Special Projects Deputy Director for the National Banking and Securities Commission in Mexico. She received a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.
Natalia Lazzati
Steering Committee
Natalia Lazzati received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Arizona in 2011; the same year she joined the University of Michigan as an assistant professor in the Economics Department. She spent 2014-2015 at UC Berkeley and Stanford University as a visiting professor and then joined the economic faculty at UC Santa Cruz. Her research areas are mainly economic theory and econometrics, including experimental and financial economics. Her current projects provide microeconomic foundations for the empirical analysis of games. She is particularly interested in building nonparametric tests for these models as well as identification results relying on minimal conditions motivated by economic theory and experimental findings.
Weishi (Grace) Gu
Steering Committee
Weishi (Grace) Gu is an associate professor at the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A common thread of her research has been applying a dynamic stochastic equilibrium approach to international economics, macroeconomics and labor market, recognizing financial friction and other constraints. Grace’s research covers a range of issues including sovereign default, global imbalances, labor market search and switching. Prior to working at UCSC, she conducted research at Cornell University, IMF, Brookings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and American Enterprise Institute.
Kristian López Vargas
Steering Committee
Kristian López Vargas is an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His main interests are Behavioral Economics and Experimental Economics. In the recent years he has worked on (i) high-frequency trading and market design in the laboratory, (ii) risk attitudes and their interplay with fairness concerns, (iii) procurement and multiunit auctions in the laboratory, and (iv) non instrumental communication in economic interactions.
Bruno Sansó
Steering Committee
Bruno Sansó is Professor of Statistics at UC Santa Cruz. Sansó’s PhD is from Universidad Central de Venezuela. He is an expert in Bayesian hierarchical models for spatio-temporal models, extreme values, computer model emulation and calibration, and point processes. His work focuses on environmental and climatological applications. Sansó joined the UCSC Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics in 2001, and was department chair during 2009-2014. He has supervised many graduate students, one of whom won the Savage Award in 2010. His publications have appeared in the most highly ranked statistical journals, obtaining some prestigious awards, like the Mitchell Prize in 2009 and 2019. He was Editor in Chief of the journal Bayesian Analysis. He has had appointed and elected leadership roles in the American Statistical Association, the International Environmetrics Society, the Bernoulli Society and the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. Sansó is Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute, Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and Fellow of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis.
Alonso Villacorta
Steering Committee
Alonso Villacorta is an assistant professor at the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University. His research is in the areas of macroeconomics and finance. He analyzes both theoretically and quantitatively the role of financial intermediation in the macroeconomy. Part of his research studies the implications of the development of securitization for aggregate lending and the structure and risk of the financial sector. Also, his research interests include contract theory with a focus on the relationship between optimal financing and firm dynamics.