Welcome to our new assistant professors!
The department is excited to welcome four new faculty members this fall!
We are thrilled to welcome four new Assistant Professors to the UC Santa Barbara Department of Economics! Each brings a unique area of expertise and fresh perspective that will strengthen our teaching, research, and community engagement. Please join us in welcoming them as they begin their UCSB journey and contribute to the department’s tradition of academic excellence and innovation.
Simon Margolin received his PhD in Economics from Princeton University in 2025. His main research interests are in macroeconomics, public finance and labor economics.
Laura C. Murphy received her PhD in Economics from Northwestern University in 2025. Her primary research interests lie in Macroeconomics and Household Finance. Her work combines rich micro data—primarily from credit bureau records—with heterogeneous agent models to study how household financial decisions shape and respond to macroeconomic phenomena.
Jason Somerville received his PhD from Cornell University in 2020, and previously worked as an Economist at the New York Federal Reserve. His research leverages insights from behavioral economics and experimental methods to study how people make choices under risk, how context shapes those choices, and what these insights mean for policy.
Jeffrey Yang received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University in 2025. His research interests include behavioral/experimental economics and microeconomic theory.
