Message from the Director

CEPA's Mission and Mindset

The Center for Economic Policy Analysis (CEPA) supports research by UC San Diego economists that speaks to important economic policy challenges. CEPA is a new initiative. In the coming years, my goals are for CEPA to support the mentorship of undergraduate and graduate research assistants, to fund postdoctoral scholars, to publish and circulate research briefs, and to host conferences and seminars that build connections between our affiliates and researchers from other institutions.

CEPA is structured around research initiatives that speak to challenges in core economic policy areas including health policy, anti-poverty policy, environmental policy, housing policy, the performance of state and local governments, and federal entitlement policy. CEPA’s initiatives blend the economic way of thinking with cutting edge empirical research to develop insights into the nature of these challenges, to assess their magnitudes, and to better understand the tools we might deploy to address them.

The economic approach to policy analysis is built on two basic principles:

1. Economic actors (whether they be consumers, workers, firms, or governments) respond to incentives.
2. Resource scarcity is the core limiting factor on our capacity to make progress on pressing challenges.

Put succinctly, incentives and resource constraints matter.

In the analysis of policy challenges and the formulation of solutions, CEPA views a clear focus on incentives, resource constraints, and the role of innovation in pushing out those constraints as a pathway to progress and abundance. The economic way of thinking focuses our attention on the effects of public policy on the incentives that shape the development of new ideas, the development of human capital, and the management of existing resources.  Through its lens we see…

• the role of new medicines, new medical devices, artificial intelligence tools, and new surgical techniques in extending longevity and addressing crises like the COVID-19 pandemic;
• how the development of human and social capital enables households to rise out of poverty;
• the role of new technologies in mitigating climate risks and the role of incentives in allocating the costs of abating pollution as efficiently as possible;
• the role of housing supply (or lack thereof) in driving the housing affordability crisis;
• the need for economic growth to manage the long-run fiscal challenges posed by federal entitlement programs.

I hope you will take an interest in the work of CEPA’s research initiatives. As CEPA launches and begins to grow, we aspire to build these initiatives out and expand their public reach. To inquire about ways to support these efforts, please visit our giving page or contact us at cepa@ucsd.edu.

Meet the Director

Jeffrey (Jeff) Clemens is an Associate Professor of Economics. Prior to his arrival at UC San Diego, Professor Clemens obtained both his BA and PhD in Economics from Harvard University. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, an adjunct Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and a CESifo Network Fellow. He currently serves as a Co-Editor at the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Health Economics, and as an Associate Editor at the Journal of Economic Perspectives and American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.

Professor Clemens has a research portfolio spanning the economics of health insurance regulation, health care payment systems, minimum wages, and the finances of state and local governments. His ongoing projects focus primarily on the economics of healthcare payment systems, on the fiscal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and on understanding the broad set of margins through which firms have responded to minimum wage increases in recent years. He brings these wide-ranging interests in the economics of public policy to his role as CEPA’s inaugural director and as an affiliate in several of CEPA’s research initiatives.