Wesley Yin

Wesley Yin is a Professor of Economics at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and the Anderson School of Management. He holds joint appointments as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Faculty Affiliate at MIT’s Jameel Poverty Action Lab. His research focuses on health care financing, consumer finance, and economic inequality, with recent work examining medical debt relief, healthcare access, and behavioral frictions in health insurance markets. Yin’s work has been published in leading journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Affairs, and widely covered by major media outlets. He served in the Biden Administration as Chief Economist of the White House Office of Management and Budget (2023-2024), and previously in the Obama Administration as Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury and Senior Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Education: Ph.D. in Economics (Princeton University), M.A. in Economics (Princeton University), B.S. and B.A. in Economics and Mathematics (University of Maryland, College Park).

Research interests include analyzing how healthcare financing intersects with consumer financial well-being, evaluating policy interventions to reduce medical debt burdens, and studying market power dynamics in healthcare systems. Recent studies have demonstrated the impact of debt relief programs on low-income households and the role of personalized outreach in improving health insurance enrollment among underserved populations.

Key awards include the TIAA-CREF 2006 Certificate of Excellence for his work on commitment savings products in the Philippines. Yin has advised federal and state governments on healthcare policy design, including contributing reports to California’s Covered California program and the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project.

Teaching responsibilities include courses on Public Finance, Health Care Economics, and Econometrics at UCLA’s graduate programs. He advises the Applied Policy Project (APP) capstone at the Luskin School.