Randall Akee is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles in the Department of Public Policy. He completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in June 2006.

Prior to his doctoral studies, Dr. Akee earned a Masters degree in International and Development Economics at Yale University. He also spent several years working for the State of Hawaii Office of Hawaiian Affairs Economic Development Division.

Dr. Akee is a research fellow at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). His main research interests are Labor Economics, Economic Development and Migration.

Previous research has focused on the determinants of migration and human trafficking, the effect of changes in household income on educational attainment, the effect of political institutions on economic development and the role of property institutions on investment decisions. Dr. Akee has worked on several American Indian reservations, Canadian First Nations, and Pacific Island nations in addition to working in various Native Hawaiian communities.

From August 2006 until August 2009 he was a Research Associate at IZA, where he also served as Deputy Program Director for Employment and Development. Prior to UCLA, he was an Assistant Professor 2009-2012 at Tufts University and spent a year at the Center for Labor Economics at University of California, Berkeley for AY 2011-2012.

In June 2013 he was named to the U.S. Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committe on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations.

1. “Young Adult Obesity and Household Income: Effects of Unconditional Cash Transfers.” (with Emilia Simeonova, J. Costello, W. Copeland, G. Keeler and A. Angold), forthcoming in American Economics Journal: Applied Economics.

 2. ”The Persistence of Self-Employment Across Borders: New Evidence on Legal Immigrants to the United States”, (with David A Jaeger and Konstantinos Tatsiramos) Economics Bulletin, Vol. 33 No. 1 pp. 126-137, 2013.

 3. “Skin Tone’s Decreasing Importance on Employment: Evidence from a Longitudinal Dataset, 1985-2000.” (with Mutlu Yuksel) Industrial and Labor Relations Review, V. 62, No. 2, 2012.