ucla phd in economics

General Catalog

Economics ma, cphil, phd.

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Ph.D. in Environment and Sustainability

Environment and sustainability ph.d. admission.

The deadline for submitting an application for admission is December 15.

UCLA’s PhD program in Environment and Sustainability seeks to recruit a diverse class of students who are keen to do path-breaking research to advance understanding and capacity for effective action on high-stakes societal challenges related to environment and sustainability.  As a newly established doctoral program with a deep commitment to supporting studies that are innovative and interdisciplinary, we seek students who are ambitious, confident, and entrepreneurial.  While we expect that the most successful candidates will have strong grounding in one or more of the research or scholarly disciplines relevant to environment and sustainability challenges, this program is most suited for students whose ambitions are too broad or too novel to be effectively addressed within a conventional disciplinary PhD program.

We expect to admit 4 to 5 students each fall. 

Overall approach to evaluating applications

Applicants must have completed a bachelor’s degree.  In addition, the program’s specific requirements for applications are listed below.  While we require these materials for all applications, we stress that our evaluation of applications will be holistic.  We will weigh all aspects of applications to form an assessment of candidates’ likely fit with, and contribution to, the program. We do not make admission decisions based on any single factor, including standardized test scores.

Application requirements:

Applications to the PhD program in Environment and Sustainability must be submitted online via the general application form for admission to graduate study at UCLA.

In addition to the general application requirements specified on that form, applicants to the PhD program in Environment and Sustainability are requested to submit the following. The general application form provides instructions how to submit letters of recommendation, as well as instructions how to upload additional materials as files.

• Please scroll to the bottom of this page for more information regarding transcripts
• For applicants whose native language is not English, scores from either the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or International English Language Testing System (IELTS) examinations.
• Three letters of recommendation, with letters from faculty members preferred.
• GRE Optional : Students are not required to take the GRE or submit a GRE score report as part of their application package. However, students may voluntarily submit GRE test scores and they will be reviewed as part of the holistic application consideration. The applications with GRE scores will not be given greater weight than those that do not include scores.
• First, briefly tell us about your engagement with research: for example, your research experience, research ambitions for your doctoral studies, and how you think you might pursue them (note: We recognize that your present plans may be preliminary and exploratory).
• Second, this program is committed to interdisciplinarity in research and scholarship. To help us assess the fit of your ambitions for this program, please identify what disciplinary fields of study are most relevant to your aims – and also tell us why you think the Environment and Sustainability PhD is a better fit for you than a disciplinary graduate program in one of these fields.
• Finally, please identify any UCLA faculty you have communicated with as potential advisors.

Preliminary consultation with potential  advisors:

To promote interdisciplinarity as the core of the program’s identity, each student’s program of study and dissertation research will be guided by two advisors, from distinct areas of research and scholarship.

We strongly encourage applicants to identify prospective areas of study, and to identify and communicate with at least one potential advisor before completing an application. 

Prospective advisors of students in the program will typically be drawn from the large number of UCLA faculty who make up the regular faculty and affiliated faculty of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.  If appropriate, advisors may also be drawn from other UCLA faculty, who represent a vast range of expertise across the physical and life sciences, humanities, fine arts, social sciences, and major fields of professional training. If you are unsure how to identify faculty whose interests and expertise fit with your aims, you might first contact a member of the PhD program’s Executive Committee , or the program’s administrative staff .  

The availability and interest of faculty advisors in applicants’ areas of interest will be one factor considered in admissions decisions.

Submitting Transcripts

You do not need to send official transcripts during the application process . The general application form provides space to upload unofficial transcripts from your prior university study. If admitted to UCLA, applicants must submit official, final academic records at that time.

Please see  https://grad.ucla.edu/admissions/required-academic-records  for more information. 

Which program should I apply for, the Environmental Science and Engineering D. Env. or the Environment and Sustainability Ph.D.?

The UCLA Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IoES) has two doctoral programs, the professional doctorate in Environmental Science and Engineering (D.Env.) and the Ph.D. in Environment and Sustainability. Both programs are interdisciplinary, both equip students with diverse perspectives to tackle pressing environmental issues, and both provide opportunities to interact with students and faculty across all the programs and projects of IoES, and more broadly across UCLA.

Environmental Science and Engineering, D.Env.

• A professionally oriented program – the only professional environmental doctorate in the nation.
• Emphasizes interactions between science, engineering, public policy, economics, and law in the protection of the environment and public health.
• Students spend two years on campus completing courses, including a major applied “Problems Course” completed in the second year.
• The dissertation is completed off campus, typically in two years, while the student is in professional residence at an environmentally focused organization – a business, public agency, consulting firm, environmental group, or non-profit organization.
• Of the program’s 250 alumni, about 90 percent are in non-academic careers in the public, private, or non-profit sectors.  

Environment and Sustainability, Ph.D.

• A research oriented program
• Newly established, with the inaugural class starting in Fall 2018
• Emphasizes interdisciplinarity and innovation in research to understand paramount environment and sustainability challenges
• Students have two advisors, from distinct disciplinary backgrounds
• Students develop an individualized program of courses in consultation with their advisors, including a small number of core courses plus additional courses that develop the foundation of knowledge and skills to support the student’s research aims, in their dissertation and their subsequent career.
• Students are typically in residence through the entire program. 
• The program will prepare students for a wide range of academic and research careers, as well as careers in environment and sustainability in the public, private, and non-profit sectors.

If you are unsure which program is right for you, we are happy to discuss it with you – or to help you transfer your application between programs.

• Ph.D. Fellowships and Support
• Ph.D. How to Apply

Course Offerings

• Applied Projects
• Distinguished Speaker Series

Explore Our Rigorous Curriculum

UCLA’s MQE is a 48-unit program that features a flexible timeline, so you complete your degree in 9 to 18 months. Throughout the program, you’ll gain exposure to R, Python, SQL, Excel and numerous financial tools and platforms. 

Create Your Course Schedule

Once you have completed required foundational and subject-area courses, you can create your own course schedule to mirror your interests. If you choose, you can complete a concentration in data analytics, finance, or international & monetary economics.

Courses for Career Success

Alumnus and faculty, Nathan Kunz ( Assistant Director, MQE Quant Lab and Lecturer ), shares how MQE courses can be tailored to diverse career goals and prepare students to be career ready.

Fall Course Offerings: Theoretical Foundations

Introduction to main topics of graduate macroeconomics, including macroeconomic data, models of economic growth, supply and demand of factors of production, business cycle models, unemployment, monetary policy and inflation, and fiscal policy and deficits.

Topics Covered:  

Introduction to the Macroeconomy

Production, Distribution, and the Markets for the Factors of Production (general equilibrium model focusing on labor and product markets, human capital accumulation, the determination of the distribution of income between labor and  

Consumption, Investment, and Savings (general equilibrium models focusing on capital markets, and the determinants of consumption and savings)

Financial Markets (process of financial intermediation and how it brings the suppliers and users of capital together; impact of technological change on financial intermediation; how venture capital promotes new firm creation)

Forecasting Methods (introducing simple and accurate methods, including smoothing, modeling trends, seasonal adjustment, ARIMA models)

Economic Growth (contributions of capital accumulation and technological change in the process of growth. Understanding how frontier growth and catch-up growth are fundamentally different. The process of innovation and technology adoption)

Global economy (link between economic openness, trade, and capital flows, and debtor and creditor nations. The role of money, inflation, and exchange rates. International policy coordination)

Through Econ 410, students will have the opportunity to attend several guest lectures and/or ‘mini courses’ hosted by the MQE. These distinguished speakers include noted academics, Nobel Laureates, government officials, and industry leaders. All have contributed greatly to their field and will impart knowledge and perspective making this a unique opportunity for students to learn about the key issues facing the world today. In addition, professional development seminars will teach students how to effectively translate their academic training for career opportunities.  Throughout the term students will have an opportunity to reflect on how their MQE coursework is helping to prepare them for future careers in applied and quantitative economics.

Designed to help students develop professional skills essential for success in professional business settings. Aids students in translating topics covered in other courses into language and format that is accessible to industry/non-academic settings. Students conduct labor market research, identify and analyze industry trends, and develop targeted plan to achieve professional success. Exploration of skills identification, goal setting, researching employment market, and resume writing.

Topics covered:

Career goals , finding fit, discovering opportunities; targeting applications

Job search strategies: employment research, job search techniques, analyzing labor market trends, skill development

Personal Branding:  marketing yourself for the job market; personal pitch; managing your brand

Professional writing ; Resume and cover letter writing

Introduction to probability, statistics, econometrics, and time series methods used in economics, business, and government using R and Python. Topics include estimation, simple and multiple regression, cross-sectional and panel data, instrumental variables, and estimation with stationary/non-stationary processes

Statistical Inference

Likelihood Inference

Exploring and Transforming Data

Linear Regression

Generalized Linear Models

Heteroskedasticity & Robust Estimation

IV – Two-Stage Least Squares; System Estimation

Cross-sectional & Panel Data

Time Series Introduction

Modeling and Forecasting Trend

Modeling and Forecasting Seasonality

ARMA & ARIMA

Regression with Time Series (VAR & VMA)

Volatility Modeling (ARCH & GARCH)  

Introduction to core principles of asset valuations. Emphasis on common economic reasoning used in valuation problems. Derivations and study of valuation formulas for three broad asset classes: fixed income securities, equity, and derivatives. Practical applications to investment problems, and relation to current financial news.

Topics Covered:

Interest rate analysis and fixed income markets (Time value of money: simple and compound interest rate, present value formulas, internal rate of return; Fixed income security pricing, Interest risk, duration and immunization; The term structure of interest rates: expectations hypothesis, liquidity preference theory, segmented market theory)

Portfolio choice and equilibrium asset pricing (Static portfolio choice for mean-variance investors: efficiency frontier, optimal portfolio, two-fund separation theorem; Static market equilibrium with mean-variance investors: market portfolio, security market line, idiosyncratic and systematic risk; Net present value for risky projects

Factor models (Equity valuation: the Gordon Growth Model and valuation ratios; Dynamic portfolio choice, hedging demand, macroeconomic determinant of interest rates and risk premia)

Derivatives (Arbitrage: the no-arbitrage condition, state prices, risk-neutral probabilities; Forward and future contracts: pricing, equivalence; Option basics: payoff, option portfolios, put-call parity; Binomial option pricing: binomial tree, dynamic hedging portfolio, delta; Merton-Black-Scholes option pricing: Itoˆ’s Lemma, Black-Scholes Formula, implied volatility, greeks; Options are everywhere: real options, embedded options, equity as an option, distance to default)

Market efficiency

Financial accounting is concerned with the preparation and public dissemination of financial reports designed to reflect corporate performance and financial condition. By providing timely, relevant, and reliable information, these reports facilitate the decision-making of investors, creditors, and other interested parties. Financial markets depend on the information contained in these reports to evaluate executives, estimate future stock returns, assess firms’ riskiness, and allocate society’s resources to their most productive uses.   This course provides a base level of knowledge needed by corporate executives to understand and discuss corporate financial statements. The process of learning how various business activities impact financial statements will also give you opportunities to learn and think about the business activities themselves. In addition, accounting provides a foundation for courses in other areas.

Balance Sheet; Income Statement

Transaction Analysis

Statement of cash flows

Current assets and Non-current assets

Liabilities

Shareholders’ Equity

Introduction to modern practices in data gathering, cleaning, and warehousing. Topics include Web scraping using API’s, engineering of R packages, and data manipulation in SQL. This course emphasizes applications of the data pipeline expected of an entry-level analyst. This instruction taught is offered as a supplement to the MAE coursework by providing solutions to expedite R coding techniques and the dissemination of analytic findings.

Survey of Relevant R packages for Data Import, Wrangling and Visualization

Creation of sharable R packages

GitHub Tutorial

API’s with R

Examples of API’s

SQL Commands

Uploading and editing SQL databases and Multitable commands

Data Visualizations With Excel, MySQL and NodeJS

Interactive data visualizations with R

Introduction to most requested data management tools in industry. Students gain hands-on experience with SQL database queries and database management through integrations with database management systems, query editors, and Python and R programming languages. Students practice saving advanced commands as stored procedures on collective database, simulating tasks seen in real world. Use of Excel and Visual Basic for Applications to make data cleaning, visualization, and data management processes more efficient.

This course explores fundamental analysis, a method of measuring a security’s value by assessing economic and financial factors.  Through lectures, readings, and interactive discussions, the course will explore macroeconomic and microeconomic factors that affect the intrinsic value of a security.  This experiential course is designed to deepen student exposure to the world of fundamental equity research through the research and development of an investment memorandum.  Students will also gain exposure to options through a series of lectures and applied activities. This course requires a basic understanding of finance and financial markets concepts and theories.

Designed to help students develop social-emotional learning skills through interactive activities and lessons to improve their abilities to succeed in variety of team settings. Lessons and activities are designed to be highly interactive, expressive, and creative and aid students in stress reduction, emotion management, and team building. Students are aided in translating topics covered in other courses into language and format that is accessible to industry/non-academic settings.

* Required Course

Winter Course Offerings: Applied Economics

• Phases of project management (Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, Closing)
• Project management frameworks (Agile, Waterfall, P3.Express, etc.)
• Use and application of various industry tools utilized in a project (Jira, monday.com, Asana, Trello, etc.)

Introduction to recent developments in international finance. Coverage of lending booms and financial crises both theoretically and empirically, as well as foreign exchange market anomalies and different approaches to forecasting exchange rates.

Models of Exchange Rate Determination : Uncovered Interest Parity and exchange rates over the short-run; Monetary Policy, the Taylor Rule and interest rates; Forecasting a time series and the Kalman Filter; Foreign Exchange Rate Anomalies (Forward Premium Puzzle; Delayed Overshooting; The Carry Trade); Rationalizing the Anomalies (Rational expectations equilibria; Behavioral Finance and Cognitive biases); Purchasing Power Parity and exchange rates; Foreign Currency Futures and Options  

Forecasting Exchange rates and Strategy Design : Basic Structure of strategy coding; Entry and exit Order types; Filters; Creating Indicators and trading setups; Fundamentals-based forecasts; Sentiment-based forecasts; Forecasts based on Big-data

Evaluation of Forecasts and of Portfolio Strategies : The Sharpe Ratio and alternative statistics; Degree of Robustness of a strategy; The Diebold-Mariano and Clark-West tests against the random-walk; Binomial test of directional forecasts

Introduction to concepts of information economics that lie at heart of modern economics and application of them to understand incentives within firms, as well as competition between them. Study of theoretical models and functioning of real-life markets, such as insurance, labor, and consumer markets. Consideration of whether we can design policies that improve market outcomes. Role of models in economics, and how to tie data and theory together.

Introduction, Performance-Pay (welfare theorems, externalities and market power; information economics)

Performance Pay – Applications (Informativeness Principle; how to approach a Case Study)

Identification (Identification strategies)

Multi-tasking (how to incentivize agent who can manipulate performance measures, and how to motivate an agent to take multiple actions)

Teamwork and Team Incentives (use tournaments incentivize workers, collusion, free-ride

Long-term Incentives – Investment and Efficiency Wages (incentivized to work via relational contracts. We test this using car plants (Capelli, Chauvin) and fast-food restaurants (Krueger))

Asymmetric Information (examines how a firm overcame the ratchet effect; asymmetric info and derive the best way to price discriminate)

Pricing and Auctions (optimal way to price discriminate; examine the performance of auction vs posted-price on eBay)

Adverse Selection

Covers set of fundamental machine learning algorithms, models, and theories, and introduces advanced engineering practices for implementing data-intensive intelligent systems. Topics involve both supervised methods (e.g., support vector machine, neural network, etc.) and unsupervised methods (e.g., clustering, dimensionality reduction, etc.), and their applications in classification, regression, data analysis, and visualization.

Python Programming: List, Array, Data Processing and Visualization  

Introduction to Machine Learning  

Linear Models for Regression  

Implementation of Linear Regression and Its Variants (Lasso, Ridge)  

Linear Models for Classification Gradient Descent and its Variants  

Polynomial Expansions and Filtering Spline Models and Regularizations  

Feedforward Neural Networks LSTM and Time-Series Data  

Max-margin Learning and Line Support Model  

Kernel Support Vector Machine  

Bagging and Boosting Adaboost Algorithms  

Clustering and K-means methods Fuzzy C-means and Constrained Clustering  

PCA and Robust PCA ICA and Multidimensional Scaling  

Subspace Learning: NMF and LLE Visualization of High-Dimensional Data

Designed to help students develop professional skills essential for success in professional business settings. Aids students in translating topics covered in other courses into language and format that is accessible to industry/non-academic settings. Students  develop a targeted plan to achieve professional success.

Networking and the hidden job market

Leveraging social media: LinkedIn; online portfolios; GitHub

Interview strategies : preparation, behavioral interviews, industry-specific/technical interviews; mock interview lab

Presentation design and delivery:  audience targeting; persuasive presentations

Job and salary offer negotiation ; professional workplace skills

Data science provides many useful tools for modeling financial data and testing hypotheses on how markets work, and prices are formed. Study of these important tools. Focus on econometric models and methods to understand financial market dynamics. Topics include returns of financial assets, statistical tests on financial market efficiency, linear time series models, time-varying expected return models, heteroscedastic volatility models, optimal portfolio choice problem, capital asset pricing models, factor models, portfolio allocation, tracking and risk management.

Stylized Facts of Financial Data (Compounding and future value of asset; simple return and continuous compounding return; returns of portfolio)

Concepts in Probability and Risk Measure (Characteristics of distributions; Quantiles of a distribution; Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES); Bivariate distributions; Covariance, correlation, autocorrelation)

Statistical Methods and Risk Management (constant expected return model; descriptive statistics: histograms, sample means, sample variances/covariances; Standard errors of estimates; Confidence intervals; Estimation and inference of VaR and ES; Testing the efficient market hypothesis

Linear Time Series Models (Strictly stationarity and covariance stationarity; information set and conditional expectation; Martingale and martingale difference; ARMA process; Nonstationary time series; Random walk tests)

Heteroscedastic Volatility Models (Volatility clustering of asset returns; ARCH(1) model; GARCH(1,1) model; Estimation and inference of GARCH model

Portfolio Theory (Financial risk of portfolio; Portfolio frontier and efficient portfolios; Statistical analysis of efficient portfolios; Portfolio theory with matrix algebra)

Efficient Portfolios and the CAPM (CAPM Review; Sharpe-Lintner Version; Black Version; Validating the CAPM based on the statistical tests; Cross-sectional regression

Factor Pricing Model (Multifactor pricing model; Applications of multifactor models; Model validation with tradable factors; Selection of factors)

A course that will develop the data visualization toolkit of students using Tableau and Python packages. Focusses will be on techniques to simplistically communicate data, Excel functions/dashboards, Tableau dashboards, Matplot library, and interactive visualizations with Plotly.  

Topics covered:  

Python reusable functions and modules  

Python Plotting libraries (Matplotlib, Plotly; Exporting interactive plots to sharable formats)

Python APIs and API wrappers

Excel Functions (Vlookup, Pivot tables, Concatenate,…)

Building an Excel Dashboard and Publishing to HTML (build interactive filters and sliders into dashboards; appropriate use of graph types; online sharing of interactive data visualizations)   Building Tableau Dashboards  

Ways to Share and Integrate Tableau Dashboards (Connect to browser, use starters, .twb files)

Automating Tableau Data Integration for Live Dashboards  

Presentation Skills for Graphs and Charts  

This course broadens exposure to tasks seen in a financial analyst role. Coding tasks will be centered around options order book, depth chart, volume profile, cointegrated assets, and commodities data. Theory covered will consist of behavioral finance relating to technical analysis, applications of portfolio optimization and hedging techniques.  

Python Packages for Financial Forecasting (Pandas, Quandl, Pyfolio, Numpy, Scipy, Statmodels)

Cointegration vs. Correlation (Calculate a hedge ratio; Mean reversion)

Monte Carlo simulation, Grid search, and optimization (Use optimization of parameters to target a desired metric)

Technical analysis / Behavioral Finance (Behavioral Finance Theory behind TA; Fibonacci retracement; How to build momentum indicators, MACD, RSI, 9OC)

Sentiment Data / Combining Sentiment Data with TA (Jake Bernstein’s DSI; sentiment data as a contrarian indicator)  

Level II market data (Reading order book data; How to deal with large financial data; Hedging with options)

Identifying Smart/Dumb Money Indicators (Parsing large order book data to create indicators)

Building an Automated trading Algorithm in Python (Walkthrough of an automated trading bot form data collection to signal)

Deploying an Automated trading Algorithm with Python (Using Alpaca API, a timestamped Python trading bot that can be used to demonstrate skill in trading )

Introduction to cloud services software relevant for big data analytics and data scientists. Survey of Amazon Web Services. Study of automated solutions to data gathering, storage, and machine learning. Students acquire specific skill sets in application programming interfaces and web scraping with Python through hands-on problem solving. Use of blockchain and smart contracts to make business processes more efficient through technical and theoretical application.

Outlook of economy is of vital importance for many key decisions. Introduction to theory and application of cutting-edge tools used by economists and business leaders to inform their views of economy. These tools are applied to forecast or nowcast key economic indicators such as inflation, unemployment, and gross domestic product. Examination of how forecasts of fundamentals can be used to inform our views on asset prices.

Example course list. Subject to change. 

Spring Course Offerings: Applied Electives

Investigation of rise of earning inequality (with emphasis on U.S.), focusing on learning how to use models and data to quantify impact of range of forces on inequality. Overview of broad empirical trends, with emphasis on understanding how to document these facts ourselves. Consideration of three classes of potential explanations for these patterns: international connections (e.g., trade and immigration), institutional change (e.g., minimum wage and unionization), and technical change (e.g., computerization and spread of robots). Focus on quantifying these forces ourselves. Study of top income inequality: why have extremely rich become much richer than very rich? Focus on CEO compensation.

National Income Accounting and the Balance of Payment, Global Imbalances: Current account sustainability; sudden stops; international capital flows and development; home bias in international portfolios

International relative prices and exchange-rate pass-through: real exchange rates and economic activity; currency unions and economic adjustment, the dollar and international prices

International production and business cycles

International trade

Introduction to models and data used to understand connection between asset prices, health of financial sector, and macroeconomy, including review of recent papers to gain introduction to questions being addressed on research frontier.

Interest Rates and Term Structure ; Macro variables and Interest Rates

Solow Growth Model (balanced growth and transition dynamics; applying model to stock market benchmarks)

Growth accounting : determinants of economic growth

NIPA Accounting using Growth Model

Measuring and projecting potential output

Benchmarks for Stock Price

Efficient Portfolio Theory & CAPM

Equity Risk Premium

Aggregate Asset Pricing Anomalies

Introduction to basic concepts, uses, and challenges of big data, with emphasis on pragmatic hands-on applications using real-world data for current and future big data practitioners — consumers of big data insights for economic applications.

Big Data (volume, velocity, variety, voracity)

Bayesian Analysis

Machine Learning & Data Mining (assessing model accuracy, logistic regression, Bayesian Decision Theory, Naïve Bayes, regression, gradient descent, LDA, QDA, K-Means, kNN, resampling methods)

Regularization methods (LASSO, Ridge, Elastic Nets), PCA, Partial Least squares, Non-linear methods, association rules, collaborative filtering  

Decision trees ; Classification Trees; Bagging; Random Forests; SVM; Neural Networks

Economic Methods and applications

Study covers asset pricing and portfolio theory, critical areas for deeper understanding of financial markets and investments. Building from theory, incorporation of empirical analysis and real-world issues to bridge theory with practice through case studies.

Applied Quantitative Methods (Probability, Regression, Optimization, Simulation) Valuation and Efficient Market Theory (Valuation methodologies and the DCF framework; Efficient market theory)  

Empirical Asset Pricing (Capital asset pricing model; Empirical risk factors; “Smart-beta” strategies)

Performance in Competitive Markets (Index vs. active; Performance analysis; Bond-market risk factors and manager performance; Stock-market risk factors and manager performance)

Alternative Investments (Hedge funds, Private equity, Real Estate)

Portfolio Theory and Practice (Modern portfolio theory; CAPM and I-CAPM; Liability-relative and goals-based asset allocation; Factor-based asset allocation)

The Optimal Portfolio (Return and risk forecasts; Mean-variance portfolio optimization and the efficient frontier; I-CAPM portfolio optimization)

Portfolio Management (selection, construction, monitoring)

Investigation of several theoretical frameworks in international economics followed by applications to empirical questions. Neoclassical trade models, analysis of firms and heterogeneous producers, and economic geography topics. Case studies and empirical papers focus on understanding determinants of trade patterns and on measurement of aggregate and distributional effects of international trade. Discussion of recent research on effects of NAFTA and Brexit, effect of trade on inequality in developed and developing countries, and impact of infrastructure investments on trade and development.

Twenty first century is the century of big data, with large datasets now appearing in many scientific fields. These datasets cannot be analyzed using classical econometric techniques. Instead, to extract useful information from these datasets, we have to rely on modern machine learning techniques. Some of these machine learning techniques, including lasso, regression trees, random forests, principle component regression, and neural networks, will be discussed in the first part of the class. In the second part, we will cover cutting edge developments at the intersection of machine learning and econometrics. In particular, we will study double machine learning in detail and discuss how to apply it to enhance the analysis of classical econometric problems, such as program evaluation, demand estimation, and asset pricing. Throughout the course, theoretical concepts will be illustrated via applications.  

Asymptotic Theory : Convergence in probability and in distribution; Law of large numbers and central limit theorem; Continuous mapping theorem, Slutsky lemma, and delta method; Consistency and asymptotic normality

Intermediate-level econometrics : Linear regression; Logistic regression; Instrumental variable regression; Maximum likelihood estimation

High-dimensional linear regression : Regularized estimation; Lasso; Variable Selection; Cross-validation; Related methods

Nonparametric estimation and machine learning : Kernel methods; Nearest neighbor methods; Regression trees; Random forests; Bagging

Neural networks : Constructing neural networks; Training neural networks; Stochastic gradient decent; Back-propagation  

Double machine learning : Estimating equations; Neyman orthogonality; Double robustness; Cross-fitting

Program evaluation : Potential outcomes; Conditional unconfoundedness; Average treatment effects; Quantile treatment effects; Local average treatment effects; Diff-in-diff estimation  

Machine learning in finance : Asset pricing via machine learning; Text data and asset pricing

Demand estimation with big data : Hedonic model; BLP model

This course focuses on modern data management systems that are used in data analytics. It exposes the students to cutting-edge data management concepts and systems and provides the students the working knowledge needed to manage large-scale data. Cloud storage systems, NoSQL databases, and the map-reduce computing paradigm are among modern data management techniques that are covered in this course.  

Storage Systems

File Formats, Network File Systems

Semi-structured date: JSON, XML

Data modeling: Entity-relationship model; relational data

Constrains and views indexing

Query execution

Hadoop map-reduce; Big data management

Cloud storage; NoSQL; MongoDB

Data stewardship

Introduction to Business Intelligence software relevant for Big Data and Financial Services companies. This course will survey Amazon AWS, PowerBI, and Hadoop, then selectively teach deployment of automated solutions on these platforms. Development of presentation skills necessary for industry.  

AWS Intro (EC2 instances, Subnets; Databases, RDS, setting up PostgreSQL and other databases)

AWS lambda Functions (Deploying a Python/R lambda function; Cloud computing architecture and logic) AWS ML / AI services (Intelligent search, Demand Forecasting, Demand projection, Text analytics)

Power BI Reports (Import data; Creating maps; DAX and M)

Power BI dashboards (Creating interactive visualizations with filters)  

Microsoft Azure services overview (Hadoop; Parallel processing; when to use Azure; Potentials of Big Data Analytics software)

Apache Hive (Sending data to Apache databases; HiveQL commands)

Data-mining with Hadoop (Using map reduce for data mining efficiency)  

Advanced SQL (Difference in SQL commands across Database services; Subqueries, declarations, null handling)

Alternate programming languages (SPSS, Julia)

This course broadens exposure to tasks seen in a quantitative analyst role. Coding tasks will be centered around options order book, depth chart, volume profile, and commodities data to create and deploy algorithmic trading bots. Theory covered will consist of behavioral finance, automation of portfolio rebalancing, and hedging techniques.  

Momentum Indicators and Behavioral Finance (Constructing MACD, RSI, Divergence, VWAP; Elliott Wave theory; Dutch Tulip Mania Study)

Index Fund rebalancing (automatically adjusting allocations of Indexes based on price movements)

Contrarian Strategy / Combining Sentiment Data (Jake Bernstein’s DSI; How to use sentiment data as a contrarian indicator)

Working with live data (Warehousing and updating live financial data; High frequency data sources)

How to deploy an algorithmic trading bot (Timestamped Python trading bot;  Pine script)  

Bloomberg Terminal (Plotting multiple series and exporting data; Integration with Excel)

Smart/Dumb Money Indicators With Options (Parsing high frequency order book data to create indicators)  

Level II market data (Reading order book data; Dealing with large financial data)

Alternate Data Sources (Volume Profile; Futures deliveries; Central Bank assets)

Frequently Asked Questions

The MQE is a 48-unit degree program.   Students can complete the degree in as few as 9 months (or 3 quarters – Fall, Winter and Spring). However, students may choose to extend the time of the program up to 18 months (4, 5, or 6 quarters). Students are only admitted in the Fall quarter.

All students are required to take a foundational course in applied statistics and econometrics (Econ 430 and 441A) during their first term and enroll in Economists in Action (Econ 410) each term. Beyond this, students select from elective courses offered by the MQE to reach their 48-unit degree requirement.

Visit this page to review the current program requirements for the MQE degree.

Yes, students can elect to complete the program in 18-months, which allows students to complete 2 courses per quarter over the course of six quarters. Please note that some courses may take place during the workday so students will need to ensure they have flexibility with their employer to accommodate live classes. Students who choose to complete the program in 9 months (three quarters) must be full-time students.

Yes, the MQE program is STEM Certified (CIP Code 45.0603: Econometrics and Quantitative Economics). To learn more about STEM OPT, please visit USCIS.GOV or UCLA’s Dashew Center.

The MQE program is focused on training students in data analytics, econometrics, machine learning, applied statistics, quantitative methods, forecasting, data mining and finance through hands-on courses, applied business projects, research activities, group work, and assignments. Students will gain exposure to R, Python, SQL, Excel and numerous financial platforms and tools throughout the program.   Our unique hands-on curriculum and approach equips graduates with the applied concepts, technical tools, and analytical skills necessary to solve complex business problems facing government agencies, financial institutions, and global corporations.  

The capstone for the Master of Quantitative Economics degree is a required course which entails the completion of either a final project or a final exam. The capstone may consist of one of the following: 1) complete a final project under the supervision of an MQE advisor and submit the results in the form of a research paper; 2) with the permission of three instructors, take a final exam; 3) complete an instructor-supervised applied project and produce a summary paper; or 4) complete an MQE-approved internship and produce a summary paper.

The final (capstone) project is designed by the student in concert with a faculty advisor and will center on the student’s interest in a particular field of economics.   MQE students select their faculty advisor and capstone topic.   Many students choose to focus on a topic related to their professional goals.  

Here are a few of the past MQE students have explored as part of their Capstone Project.

• Bridging Venture Capital to the Public Market
• Utilizing High Dimensional Data to Analyze the Effect of Uber on Public Transportation Use
• Green vs. Grown: An Analysis of How Nigeria’s Electric Power Sector Reform Act Impacted Greenhouse Gas Emissions

MQE students may take select PhD courses within The Department of Economics. Details are provided to students during the registration period each term. Courses offered by other units at UCLA are not permitted.

Throughout the year, the MQE partners with companies to provide students with opportunities to apply their MQE coursework and training to solve business problems faced by corporations of all sizes.   Students work in small teams under the guidance of a faculty coach to analyze data and present solutions to the corporate partner. Applied projects range in length and focus based on the needs of the business partner. Past projects have served clients in technology, ecommerce, entertainment, cybersecurity, financial services, digital marketing, analytics, sustainability, healthcare, and non-profit fields.

The UCLA Department of Economics offers undergraduate majors in Economics and Business Economics, a PhD program, and the Master of Quantitative Economics program. PhD students earn a Master of Arts along the way, but students cannot be directly admitted into that Master of Arts program.

The MQE program is focused on providing students with extensive coursework focused on quantitative economics, data analytics and finance, based on the skills desired by industry. Most PhD programs are focused on advanced economics and research training.

Privacy Policy

• Department of Economics Commencement 2024

Department Commencement Ceremony 2024

The UCLA Department of Economics Commencement will take place on Saturday, June 15, at 6:00 p.m. in Pauley Pavilion. You and your guests should expect to arrive at around 5:00 p.m., with the ceremony expected to end by 8:30 p.m. Students are expected to stay for the duration of the ceremony out of respect for your fellow graduates.

To stay updated on commencement information, be sure to register for Econ-Alert . More detailed information will be sent via Econ-Alert between now and commencement.

Student RSVP and guest ticket ordering for departmental commencements will begin on Friday, May 10th and will end on Friday, May 24th at 11:59 p.m. PT.

To participate in the UCLA Department of Economics Commencement and to order tickets for your family and friends to attend, please follow the instructions that you will find at Ticketing – Commencement (ucla.edu) .

Fall 2024 Graduates

If you will be completing your degree in Fall Quarter 2024 and meet the eligibility requirements to participate the June 2024 ceremony, you will find instructions on submitting a Special Inclusion Petition (SIP) at CAAC – Graduation & Commencement .

Degree Check & Checklist

For a checklist of items to consider as you approach graduation, please review the 2024 Graduation Checklist .

For a degree check to confirm you are on track to complete all degree requirements, we recommend that you meet with a College Counselor .

CONGRATULATIONS, CLASS OF 2024!

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2025 – economics & damages: forensic accounting & valuation summer associate, campus.

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Our Summer Associate internships will be approximately 8 weeks in length and will begin Summer 2025. Summer Associate positions are for candidates with an expected graduation date between December 2025 – August 2026.

This position is in our Houston, TX office.

Candidate must be able to submit verification of his/her legal right to work in the United States, without company sponsorship now or in the future.

Summer Associates work closely with BRG experts. BRG experts generally possess forensic accounting and financial expertise, or both. Their expertise includes evaluating the financial and operational records of global organizations in various industries and have provided expert evidence and testimony in many jurisdictions. BRG’s forensic accounting teams are adept at translating complex financial transactions and numerical data into terms that a layperson can understand and interpret in a legal setting. Our forensic accounting experts apply their understanding of industry, accounting, finance, and economics to address complex issues that arise in dispute resolution in areas such as forensic investigations, commercial damages, bankruptcies, intellectual property, insurance claims, and business valuations.

The work of a Summer Associate can be either qualitative or quantitative in nature, and projects range from industry and subject-matter research to data collection to the preparation of financial, accounting, and other forms of analysis.

Responsibilities:

• Perform detailed research and analysis, including the review of various litigation-related documents and accounting and auditing standards.
• Assist in the analysis of financial statements, general ledgers, and other financial documents to determine if accounting malpractice or fraud is indicated.
• Evaluate historical and projected financial performance in connection with determination of damages or diminution of value.
• Assist in the preparation of expert witness reports by forming opinions based on industry research and knowledge, data analysis, and financial modeling.
• Develop and maintain electronic databases, spreadsheets, and other files as dictated by project needs.
• Organize case documents, create electronic libraries for documents, and retrieve documents as necessary.
• Demonstrate creativity and efficient use of relevant software tools, analytical methods, and computer models to develop solutions.
• Participate in a team environment and work hard to meet client deadlines and quality expectations.
• Participate in group practice meetings and travel as needed.
• Work closely with all experienced team members to identify and resolve issues encountered in completing engagement objectives through effective and timely communication.
• Audit own work product and work product of others to ensure quality.
• Demonstrate strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Assist with recruiting and other firm-sponsored events.
• Participate in various training opportunities to continue learning and to enhance existing or obtain new skillsets.

Qualifications:

• Progression towards a bachelor’s or master’s degree in the field of Accounting and/or Finance with an expected graduation date between December 2025 – August 2026.
• 0-2 years of experience including internships
• 3.5 GPA or higher
• Must have a strong understanding of accounting principles and financial statements (e.g., relationship between debits and credits and statement of cash flow, income statement, balance sheet, and trial balance).
• Willingness to consider becoming a CPA.
• Proven capability with MS Excel.
• Experience with relational database program(s) (e.g., MS SQL Server, MS Access, MySQL, Oracle, Teradata) or statistical analysis programs (e.g., SAS, SPSS, Stata, R) is preferred. A desire to expand those capabilities is required.

Candidate must be able to submit verification of their legal right to work in the U.S., without company sponsorship.

BRG has been named as a 2023 Campus Forward Award Winner for Large Early Career Programs by Ripplematch. This award recognizes excellence in early career hiring, celebrating the programs that embrace innovative recruitment strategies, are making significant investments in diversity and inclusion, and are supporting the next generation of talent through impactful internships and entry-level programs.

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Headquartered in Emeryville, California, BRG currently has over 40 offices across the United States and internationally. This position is in the Houston, TX office. BRG requires working with colleagues in the office. Our in-office requirements are driven by the practice area or sector, and office location.

Statement of Members of the Department of History in Response to the Attack on the Encampment on 30 April 2024

We, members of the History Department, a number of whom were present during the events of the night of 30 April to 1 May, strongly condemn the mob attack on our students and the university’s failure to support our students’ right to protest peacefully and to be kept safe while doing so.

The encampment itself had been a model of its kind: it was limited to members of the university community through the checking of IDs to gain access; participants made continual efforts to avoid engagement with hecklers; and it maintained its focus on its own concerns. This orderly and self-disciplined environment seemed to have the support of the university administration, which initially praised its decorum. This policy on the part of the UC and UCLA administration earned high praise for its restraint and for its clear dedication to protecting the rights of students to protest peacefully.

In a sharp reversal, on 30 April, President Drake issued a statement declaring that the encampment was “unlawful,” and Chancellor Block called it “unauthorized.” Such statements withdrew official protections from these peaceful student activities, making the students vulnerable to attack. Later that night, the campus was invaded by a violent mob of individuals including many not affiliated with the campus community. History faculty who were present reported that many were middle-aged men; some shouted white supremacist slurs; and others brandished flags linked to violent, right-wing organizations. The security personnel who had been stationed around the barricade left the scene, abandoning it to attack. The violent mob used toxic spray, fireworks, pieces of the barricade, pipes, boards, and bottles to assault the students and faculty inside the encampment. They tore the barricades apart to get at the students inside. During this time, the security personnel and campus police made no effort to stop them. Student journalists and faculty observers outside the encampment were also threatened and assaulted. When police finally arrived many hours later, they watched the attacks, failing to come to the aid of those in the encampment. Some history department faculty who were at the scene reported that police, far from putting a halt to the violence,  seemed to be marching alongside the mob. No emergency aid was provided to the students who were bleeding, gassed, or concussed. Today we heard many first-hand accounts of the violence and the lack of support from police and security forces.

We want to object in the strongest possible terms to this travesty. We are horrified that Chancellor Block abdicated his responsibility to protect and support students. His statements (and those of President Drake) opened the way to these attacks on our community. The exemplary nature of this encampment made it a target for those who oppose the free exercise of views other than their own. We demand that the Chancellor and the President be held accountable for their actions in sacrificing student safety and liberties to political expediency. We call for the resignation of Chancellor Gene Block.

We want the university to stand up for the safety and the rights of the campus community by defending the continuing existence of the encampment. The encampment must be protected and the rights of peaceful protests upheld.

Carla G. Pestana, Distinguished Professor and Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair of America in the World

Koh Choon Hwee, Assistant Professor 

Bharat Venkat, Associate Professor

Elizabeth O’Brien, Assistant Professor

Miloš Jovanović, Assistant Professor

Fernando Pérez-Montesinos, Assistant Professor

Kevin Kim, Assistant Professor

Hollian Wint (Frederick), Assistant Professor

Katherine Marino, Associate Professor

Jared McBride, Assistant Professor 

Katsuya Hirano, Associate Professor

Kevin Terraciano, Professor, Robert Burr Chair of History 

Brenda Stevenson, Professor and Nickoll Family Endowed Chair in History

Mary Corey, Senior Continuing Lecturer

Ghislaine Lydon, Associate Professor

Michael Meranze, Professor

Jim Gelvin, Distinguished Professor

Andrea Goldman, Associate Professor

Valerie Matsumoto, Professor, Aratani Chair on the Japanese American Incarceration, Redress, and Community

Tobias Higbie, Professor

Caroline Ford, Professor

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Distinguished Professor & Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences

Vinay Lal, Professor

Greg Woolf, Distinguished Professor and Ronald J. Mellor Chair of Ancient History

Soraya de Chadarevian, Professor

Peter Stacey, Associate Professor

Nile Green, Professor & Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History

William Marotti, Associate Professor

Sarah Stein, Professor

Stefania Tutino, Professor and Peter Reill Chair in European History

Richard von Glahn, Distinguished Professor

Minayo Nasiali, Associate Professor

Sebouh Aslanian, Professor and Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History

Muriel McClendon, Associate Professor

Kelly Lytle-Hernandez, Professor and The Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History

Robin Derby, Professor, Dr. E. Bradford Burns Chair in Latin American Studies

Andrew Apter, Professor

Stella Ghervas, Professor and Eugen Weber Chair in Modern European History

H. Glenn Penny,  Professor and Henry J. Bruman Chair in German History

Robin D. G. Kelley, Distinguished Professor  and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair

Mary Momdjian , Continuing lecturer

Anthony Vivian, Lecturer in Ancient History

David Warren Sabean, Henry J. Bruman Chair of German History, emeritus, and Distinguished Research Professor of European History

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Center for the Study of Women Statement on Palestine Solidarity Encampment and Protests

We decry the administration’s deployment of police in response to our community’s protected right to protest. CSW’s mission is based on women’s studies and gender studies, fields that emerged out of social movements based on principled protest. For many years, one of our core research priorities has been anti-carceral feminist studies, which links critiques of prisons, policing, and punishment to the development of alternative ways of relating to each other through care and mutuality. We saw inspiring examples of the latter in the Palestine Solidarity Encampment, but appalling examples of the former in the administration’s brutal and repressive response—a response that continues to the moment of this writing, as hundreds of police and campus security staff roam our campus.

In solidarity, we join our students in denouncing Israel’s ongoing campaign of genocide in Palestine. We commit to working collectively to create true safety for our campus and our community.  

Grace Kyungwon Hong, Director

Nina Eidsheim, Associate Director

UCLA Center for the Study of Women|Barbra Streisand Center, 1500 Public Affairs Building, BOX 957222, Los Angeles, CA 90095-7222

The CSW|Streisand Center at UCLA acknowledges our presence on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples.

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UCLA Graduate Programs

Graduate Program: Economics – Master of Quantitative Economics

UCLA's Graduate Program in Economics – Master of Quantitative Economics offers the following degree(s):

Master of Quantitative Economics (M.Q.E.)

With questions not answered here or on the program’s site (above), please contact the program directly.

Economics – Master of Quantitative Economics Graduate Program at UCLA 8276 Bunche Hall Box 951477 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1477

Visit the Economics Department’s faculty roster

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Visit the registrar's site for the Economics Department’s course descriptions

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MAJOR CODE: ECONOMICS – MASTER OF QUANTITATIVE ECONOMICS

‘Bunker mentality’ at Columbia lit protest spark that spread nationwide

Decision-making at the university, long a magnet for protests, became centralized and shrouded even to high-level administrators as the crisis intensified.

Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, was in Washington on April 17 when she logged in to Zoom to convene her deans.

Earlier in the day, pro-Palestinian demonstrators had erected a tent encampment on the Manhattan quad. They staged their protest just as Shafik — an economist and former vice president of the World Bank who was less than 10 months into her presidency — was preparing to testify before a House committee investigating Columbia and other universities over their response to campus antisemitism inflamed by the Israel-Gaza war .

Hours later, she met with the deans remotely, people familiar with the meeting said, not to solicit advice or seek approval from the university leaders with vast responsibility over their respective schools, in charge of academics, discipline and public relations. Instead, she informed them of her plan: to call police onto campus if the students refused to yield.

By the time she arrived back on campus the next day, Shafik had set in motion a series of events that would fuel protests throughout the country and turn her campus into the center of a national debate over speech, hate, complicity and university governance. This debate is unfolding against the backdrop of a bruising presidential campaign increasingly intertwined with the aftershocks of the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 and the global consequences of the war in Gaza.

College protests over Gaza war

Columbia, unlike many large universities, doesn’t have its own police force. Shafik’s decision to enlist the New York Police Department to clear the student encampment, made swiftly with only a handful of high-level advisers, came over the express disapproval of the university senate, a policymaking body representing faculty, students, administrators and alumni and set up in response to the campus demonstrations in 1968 that made Columbia a landmark in agitation against the Vietnam War.

Shafik’s use of force galvanized the protests, with escalating rhetoric soon pitting students against one another and leading a rabbi on campus to urge Jewish students to return home for their safety. The standoff culminated in a second encounter with police nearly two weeks later, after demonstrators occupied Hamilton Hall, a highly symbolic building targeted in previous student protests. And it set off a cascade of similar confrontations with law enforcement nationwide, from Indiana University to the University of Texas at Austin to UCLA.

Interviews with administrators, trustees, donors and others show decision-making at Columbia became increasingly centralized and shrouded even to high-level university officials as the crisis intensified — eroding trust in the president even as she faced what many concede were impossible choices. On Wednesday, the Arts and Sciences faculty agreed to consider a motion of no confidence in Shafik, with voting to take place for a week.

In a Thursday email to faculty, Shafik acknowledged, “I know that many of you are angry, and that you feel let down by me and by other University leaders for many different reasons.” A university spokesperson declined to make Shafik available for an interview but wrote in a statement that she “leads through consultation and consensus, and regularly meets with people from across Columbia, including faculty, administration, and trustees, as well as with state, city, and community leaders.”

On the April 17 Zoom, some deans warned Shafik about the consequences of police action, asking her to consider the damage done to the university’s reputation in 1968, according to people familiar with the discussions.

“This was not a conversation to explore options,” said one person who participated in the Zoom session and, like some others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive details. “When some tried, it was clear the decision had already been made.”

A university official rejected that characterization, saying Shafik continued to consider alternatives as Columbia gave students more time to disband, ultimately enlisting police the next morning. Throughout the crisis, Shafik has faced competing pressures, including from a board of trustees where some floated unorthodox ideas, such as erecting a barrier around the student protesters to prevent them from disrupting university business, according to a trustee. Some trustees saw in the Hamilton Hall occupation echoes of the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 , 2021, according to a person familiar with their thinking.

Numerous trustees supported Shafik’s move to call police onto campus, but some did not, according to a person familiar with those deliberations. A trustee said Shafik listens patiently and seeks consensus but is a decisive leader who understood that the decision was ultimately hers. Shafik acted, she explained in a letter to the NYPD, to ensure campus safety and compliance with university policies.

Some influential donors wanted firmer action.

“Columbia has been too slow to respond and to recognize these s---heads for what they are,” Leon Cooperman, a billionaire investor and Columbia Business School alumnus, said in an interview. Cooperman said he spoke one-on-one with Shafik several weeks before her congressional testimony, after he had threatened publicly to cut off contributions to the university.

Many other university leaders have also involved law enforcement to confront Columbia-style encampments that sprang up after police moved in on the New York campus. But not all of them. The president of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., wrote this week that he would not call the police on students even though their encampment violated the school’s rules.

“Cops don’t always give people tickets for going a few miles over the speed limit,” wrote the president, Michael S. Roth, a historian. “Context matters. … In this case, I knew the students were part of a broad protest movement, and protest movements often put a strain on an institution’s rules.”

Some students at Columbia, Wesleyan and elsewhere have demanded their universities disclose and sell off holdings in businesses and funds they see as complicit in Israel’s war. Nearly all of those demands have gone unmet, though some schools have taken steps to allay student anger, including promises to solicit their input on investments.

Some see in the national showdown centered at Columbia not just echoes of past protests but also omens of an even more fractured future.

“This protest is different from others that have occurred at Columbia, and Columbia’s had a lot of protests,” said James Valentini, a chemist and former longtime dean of Columbia College. “This is the first protest that wasn’t just students against the administration as the object of the action. Now we have students pitted directly against other students in a quite significant and dangerous way.”

‘They’ll destroy you’

A scheduling conflict prevented Shafik from joining the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT when they appeared before the Republican-led House Education Committee in December and gave nuanced yet evasive answers about disciplining calls for genocide. Two later resigned.

Four months later, Shafik was determined not to be the committee’s third casualty when it was her turn to appear on Capitol Hill, according to people who prepared her for the April 17 testimony or spoke with her team.

In her testimony, Shafik vowed to suppress hateful speech and discipline individual employees who seemed to express support for Hamas or its rampage on Oct. 7. And she stated unequivocally that calls for genocide would violate the university’s code of conduct.

A baroness in Britain, where she previously led the London School of Economics, Shafik had less experience with U.S. politics. But her approach drew on the advice of seasoned political strategists.

“The rap on the December hearings was that there were too many lawyers and too few communicators,” said Philippe Reines, a former longtime press aide to Hillary Clinton who helped prepare Shafik and others from the university, including the two co-chairs of the university’s board of trustees, for their testimony.

Clinton, who teaches at Columbia, recommended Reines to Shafik, he said. He had prepared the former secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee for her testimony about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and later played Donald Trump during her debate practice in 2016.

Others involved in readying Shafik for the congressional gantlet had previously advised U.S. presidents: Shailagh Murray, Columbia’s executive vice president for public affairs who earlier served as a high-level communications adviser to President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden and before that was a Washington Post reporter, and Dana Remus, who until July 2022 served as President Biden’s White House counsel and is now a partner at Washington-based Covington & Burling, whose offices served as a makeshift war room on the day of the hearing. The New York Times first reported Covington’s involvement.

Shafik’s vow to prevent protests from growing abusive — and her rejection of such slogans as “from the river to the sea,” a common chant of student protesters that some interpret as an antisemitic call to eliminate Israel — earned praise within the GOP. “Columbia beats Harvard and UPenn,” Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.) quipped.

But her disclosure of specific disciplinary decisions rankled many back on campus, who criticized her approach to avoiding conflict with the committee. “I think the feeling was, ‘My God, you can’t go toe-to-toe with a congressional committee. They’ll destroy you. Your only hope is to give in,’” said a former senior administrator. “It was a capitulation to a committee that was out to condemn universities.” A university official said voluminous document requests from the committee had included information about individual employees.

The table had already been set for Shafik to try mollifying critics. After protests began last fall, administrators clarified and tightened rules for campus events, without input from the university senate, and used them to suspend two groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.

Joseph Slaughter, a former faculty senator and director of Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, described these developments as a “coup” by senior administrators “who don’t know our students, and don’t know the statutes and norms of Columbia.” (A university official said that the groups were in violation of every iteration of Columbia’s rules, and that neither group has since agreed to comply, which would enable their reinstatement.)

In early April, the university suspended a handful of students for their alleged involvement in an unauthorized event called “Resistance 101.” To gain information about attendees at the event, the university enlisted what an administrator described in a statement as “an outside firm led by experienced former law enforcement investigators.”

Students expressed their outrage by beginning their encampment on the day of Shafik’s testimony, gaining maximum visibility as Congress turned a spotlight on their university. They labeled an area on the central quad a “liberated zone” in an echo of language used in the 1968 protests.

The university issued an order to disperse at 11 that morning. Plans to bring in the police took shape quickly, devised by Shafik along with the provost, general counsel and other senior university leaders, according to a Columbia official.

That afternoon, members of the university senate’s executive committee held an emergency meeting and addressed a joint email to the administration opposing police involvement, indicating they did “not approve the presence of NYPD on our campus at this time.” Columbia’s governing rules envision “consultation” with the committee before such a decision but preserve the president’s “emergency authority to protect persons or property.”

Students, initially ordered to disperse at 11 a.m., were given an extension until 9 p.m. University officials spoke with NYPD representatives that evening and asked to talk again in the morning.

After her testimony, Shafik remained in Washington to attend a previously scheduled dinner for the Bezos Earth Fund, a climate philanthropy founded by Amazon Chair Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. She did not return to New York until the next day, April 18, according to people familiar with her whereabouts.

Fight for ‘our university’

That morning, Shafik held another Zoom meeting with deans just as senior staff for New York Mayor Eric Adams were agreeing on an internal call that university leaders would have to put any request for police intervention in writing, according to a city official on the call. The goal, the official said, was to make clear that “we didn’t make this decision.”

Columbia’s written request came at 10:30 a.m. Officers moved in shortly after noon and arrested 108 people , including two law students acting as legal observers whose charges were quickly dropped after pressure from university lawyers, according to people familiar with the process. Charges against the other students were also later dropped.

University leaders knew they had a full-blown crisis on their hands. The 21-member board of trustees held around 15 sessions in the two weeks after the encampment was cleared, two trustees estimated. “The board fully supported Minouche on getting the campus under control,” one trustee said, adding there was “robust discussion” about her options.

The governing board’s members represent a broad cross-section of industries, including finance, government, medicine and media. One trustee said the board skews center-left. Among its members is Li Lu, a Chinese-born investor who was a leader of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, according to Columbia Magazine. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Shafik did not continue to consult with the cadre of politically savvy advisers who had prepared her for her testimony in Washington, according to Reines and a university trustee. Likewise, she did not involve Lee Bollinger, her immediate predecessor and a First Amendment scholar who had led Columbia for 21 years, before bringing in police, said a person familiar with the deliberations. She did later speak with Bollinger, according to a university official.

By this time, Shafik knew she had taken an extraordinary step by calling in police and wanted to adopt a less confrontational approach to ease campus tensions, according to a senior administrator. But at the very moment that she was looking for compromise, the protests swelled, with a tent city emerging just across from where the previous encampment had been disbanded.

The administration could not escape its “ferocious bunker mentality,” said James Applegate, an astronomy professor and member of the university senate’s executive committee. On the other side was a “group that just wants confrontation.”

Columbia’s provost, Angela V. Olinto, who acts as the university’s chief academic officer, tasked Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College, and Jelani Cobb, the dean of the journalism school, with coordinating negotiations with protesters. A business school professor, Geoff Heal, who specializes in environmental economics, had already been asked to explain the complexities of divestment to the protesters, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Heal did not respond to a request for comment.

Negotiations began on April 19 in Columbia’s columned Low Library, according to Sueda Polat, a graduate student. The talks were halting, sometimes lasting for hours and sometimes quickly breaking down.

Meanwhile, campus outrage was boiling over . The Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a professional faculty organization, said it had lost confidence in Shafik and pledged to “fight to reclaim our university.”

The new encampment remained mostly peaceful. During the Passover holiday, it played host to Seders held by pro-Palestinian protesters, some of whom were Jewish.

At the same time, some protesters escalated their tactics, according to video and other evidence. An Israeli flag was burned on campus. Chants made clear the encampment was an unwelcome place for Zionists. Some of the most extreme rhetoric was lobbed just outside the campus gates, with students and others told to “go back to Poland” and warned, “The 7th of October is about to be every day for you.” Many campus activities went remote.

In the fallout, Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots and Columbia benefactor, pledged to withhold support for the university, saying it was “no longer an institution I recognize.” Biden also weighed in, condemning what he called “antisemitic protests” while refraining from assessing Shafik’s leadership.

By April 27, a Saturday, the administration had presented its final offer to the student protesters, proposing that in exchange for clearing the encampment, the university would accelerate review of student suggestions regarding divestment issues, increase transparency of investments, and fund health and education initiatives in Gaza.

The students voted to reject the deal. Polat said there was no chance of approval. “Not at all,” she said. “Students are prepared to confront militarized police violence. I think people underestimate how powerful and tough students are.”

The university then ordered students to leave the main campus lawn and, on April 29, said it was beginning to suspend those who refused. Early the next morning, a group of students seized Hamilton Hall, modeling their action on past takeovers of the same building — in 1968 to protest the war in Vietnam and demonstrate for the civil rights movement and again in 1996 to demand the creation of an ethnic studies department.

The 1968 seizure of Hamilton Hall is now memorialized by Columbia as a watershed, a protest against “racism,” among other causes, according to the university website , which notes that the student action ended when police “stormed the campus and arrested more than 700 people.”

‘I knew it would be violent’

Shafik again appealed to city police to clear the protests.

In an April 30 letter , she specified that she had the “support of the University’s Trustees” and wrote that the building takeover and related protests “pose a clear and present danger to persons, property, and the substantial functioning of the University and require the use of emergency authority to protect persons and property.”

She alleged that the takeover was “led by individuals who are not affiliated with the University,” and she asked that police remain on campus through at least May 17.

A shelter-in-place warning went out to students shortly after 8 p.m.

The participation of protesters unaffiliated with the university weighed heavily on university leaders, according to a trustee and others familiar with the deliberations. But even deans had limited details about the extent of outside involvement, relying on updates from university leaders or sometimes on public news report, and student protesters deny they were led by outsiders.

That evening, deans reengaged with student representatives, warning them that there were 1,000 police officers surrounding campus and again asking them to take the administration’s deal. They refused, according to people involved in the discussions. Mahmoud Khalil, one of the student representatives, said he continued working with mediators from the university senate to learn if evacuating the building would prevent arrests. But he ran out of time.

“No one wants NYPD to come in,” Khalil said. “I knew it would be violent.”

Shortly before 10 p.m., officers in riot gear entered the building through a back window via a ladder fixed to a police vehicle. They pushed, struck and dragged students, according to witnesses, video and medical records. One suffered an eye socket fracture, according to medical records provided to The Post. Several students said they were concussed. One police sergeant accidentally fired his gun inside the building, the department later disclosed, saying he was not aiming at anyone and no one was injured.

A spokesperson for the police department said that officers acted professionally “when Columbia’s administrators asked the NYPD to regain control of the campus they had lost” and suggested that protesters had staged certain injuries while stashing gas masks, knives and hammers inside Hamilton Hall.

Police arrested 22 Columbia students and two employees, along with a handful of students from affiliated institutions and 13 others, according to information later released by the university. The protesters were charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor.

Brian Cohen, the executive director of Columbia’s chapter of the Jewish campus organization Hillel, said the crisis that culminated with the sweep of Hamilton Hall resulted not from the involvement of law enforcement but from what he described as the university’s failure to act sooner.

“Our students have to be able to sleep, they have to be able to study, they have to be able to participate in their classes, and they need to be able to escape the protests,” he said. “The lack of enforcement of the rules just led to this downward trajectory at the university, which ended up in a place of chaos.”

At the end of the week, Shafik released a video saying that the previous two weeks had been “among the most difficult in Columbia’s history” but emphasizing that the university was resilient, even if it couldn’t “single-handedly” resolve ancient forms of hatred.

“What we can do is be an exemplar of a better world, where people who disagree do so civilly,” she said.

Still, difficult decisions lay ahead. Three days later, the university said it would cancel its main commencement ceremony , scheduled for May 15.

Not all trustees favored the decision, a person familiar with their discussions said. But when they met Wednesday, trustees commended Shafik for what one trustee called her “steadfast leadership.”

Razzan Nakhlawi and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.

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Opinion | Crucial, not cruel and unusual: The Supreme…

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Opinion | Crucial, not cruel and unusual: The Supreme Court weighs homelessness regulations

The class action lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of anti-camping ordinances in a small Oregon town, but the impact of the Justices’ ruling will be especially strong here in California. More than 123,000 Californians  don’t have shelter – nearly half of the total unsheltered population in the US.

While the challengers in Grants Pass argue that camping bans effectively criminalize homelessness, public officials contend that these ordinances are a critical tool to address public safety issues that arise from homeless encampments. About 30 California cities and counties, as well as the League of California Cities, have filed amicus briefs  supporting Grants Pass.

San Francisco and Sacramento, like Grants Pass, have been under injunctions from federal courts that prevent or delay enforcement of anti-camping laws based on the 2018 Martin v. Boise decision. That ruling asserts that arresting or citing people for sleeping on public property violates the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause if the individuals have nowhere else to go.

The Martin decision has left municipalities with few options to address encampments if shelter availability can’t be confirmed on the spot. This, of course, is a nearly impossible task for public safety officers given that the number of open shelter beds is constantly in flux. But many public officials, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed  and Governor Gavin Newsom , argue that prohibiting local governments from clearing encampments is neither a workable nor compassionate policy for addressing homelessness.

In our 2022 Hoover Institution  report on the state of homelessness in California, we highlighted that law enforcement plays a crucial role in addressing the challenges faced by the unsheltered. Finding practical solutions has only become more relevant as the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness continues to grow.

Encampments can be serious safety and environmental hazards, as well as hotbeds for criminal activity  like drug dealing  and violence . San Francisco firefighters responded to over 680 encampment fires  in the first 300 days of 2023 alone, and earlier this year a Los Angeles fire captain was injured by an explosion  while battling an encampment fire.

Opponents of camping bans argue that they perpetuate a cycle of interactions with the justice system, but this ignores the reality that these ordinances are key tools used by law enforcement to motivate homeless individuals to accept social services. In fact, many camping ordinances require advance warnings and multiple citations before any arrests can be made.

The Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on Grants Pass will be a monumental one for California officials struggling to end homelessness. Californians know well that solving homelessness requires an expansive toolbox, and anti-camping ordinances are a key lever for encouraging people to get the help they need.

The court should give the power to address homelessness and maintain public safety back to the municipalities who deal with these issues firsthand, rather than constitutionalizing a right to vagrancy from the bench.

Joshua Rauh is the Ormond Family Professor of Finance at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Jillian Ludwig is the research program manager for the Hoover Institution’s State and Local Governance Initiative . They are authors of “ Homelessness in California: Practical Solutions for a Complex Problem “

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