Kareem Haggag

Kareem Haggag is an Associate Professor of Behavioral Economics at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he joined the faculty in 2021. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Prior to UCLA, he served as an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University and was a postdoctoral fellow with the Financial Inclusion Program at Yale University/Innovations for Poverty Action.

Haggag received his Ph.D. in Economics in 2016 from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and his B.A. in Economics in 2008 from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

As an applied microeconomist, Haggag studies topics at the intersections of economics, political science and psychology. His research attempts to understand the roots and consequences of biases in consumer choice, finance, education, voting and labor markets. He has made significant contributions to understanding how early-life experiences shape political identity, particularly through his research on school racial diversity and its long-term effects on political preferences. His work on busing policy reforms in North Carolina demonstrated causal evidence that exposure to diversity at school influences political preferences later in life.

Haggag's research utilizes innovative data sources including smartphone GPS records, large-scale voter files, and Uber driver data to bring new insights to economic questions. His publications have appeared in top journals including Management Science, Review of Economic Studies, and American Economic Review: Insights. His work has been widely covered by major media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Scientific American, and NPR's Morning Edition.

• Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research

Haggag's research on voting behavior revealed significant racial disparities in voting wait times, showing that residents of entirely-black neighborhoods waited 29% longer than those in entirely-white neighborhoods. His work on attribution bias demonstrated how temporary states like fatigue during early morning classes can influence major decisions such as college major selection. His research team conducts both field and laboratory experiments to investigate how environmental factors influence economic decisions across various contexts.

His laboratory focuses on understanding decision-making processes with particular attention to how environmental factors and temporary states influence long-term choices, with applications to policy areas including voting rights, educational equity, and labor market dynamics.