School of Public Policy Economic Seminar Series

The School of Public Policy Economic Seminar Series features a range of events that focus on the integration of economic analysis and policy decisions that directly impact human flourishing in today’s increasingly complex landscape. These academic workshops are led by Dr. Luisa Blanco and Dr. James Prieger, professors of public policy.

Dr. Luisa Blanco, Professor of Public Policy

Luisa Blanco is an economist specializing in economic development and international economics, with a focus on the Latin American region. Dr. Blanco research interests pertain to the wellbeing of Latin Americans at home and abroad. At Pepperdine's School of Public Policy, Blanco teaches the core course on Macroeconomic Policy and other courses related to the economics specialization, such as Global Economics and Latin American Economic Development.

Blanco is a scholar at UCLA Resource Center for Minority Aging Research-Center for Health Improvement of Minority Elderly (RCMAR-CHIME), a Visiting Senior Scholar at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank (2017-2018), an Adjunct Researcher at RAND Corporation, and a Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College at Oxford.

Blanco's funded research projects focus on financial behavior and financial planning for retirement among minorities in the United States. She conducted a community based randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention on retirement saving among Hispanics in the Los Angeles area. Blanco also leads the mobile money diary project, which collects data about financial behavior and health among Hispanics in California.

Blanco's research specific to the Latin American region focuses on issues related to economic development and policy-making, such as institutions, democracy, political instability, crime, capital accumulation, capital flows, financial development, inequality, and natural resources.

Blanco's work has been published in journals such as the World Development, Journal of Development Studies, Oxford Development Studies, Southern Economic Journal, Resources Policy, Energy Economics, Latin American Research Review, among others.

Dr. James Prieger, Professor of Public Policy

James E. Prieger is an economist specializing in regulatory economics, industrial organization, and applied econometrics. Previously, he was an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Davis. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Yale University and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Prieger has written for scholarly journals on a diverse array of policy topics such as the impact of telecommunications regulation on innovation; broadband deployment and the digital divide; the impact of the broadband provisions of ARRA (the 2009 stimulus bill); whether cell phone use causes traffic accidents; the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act on retail firms; applications barriers to entry in network markets; entrepreneurship, R&D, and economic growth; the determinants of civic engagement; minority entrepreneurship; and tobacco taxes and illicit markets.

Prieger currently serves as a Senior Fellow for the Reason Foundation and participates as an academic advisory board member for The Free State Foundation. Prieger sits on the editorial boards of Applied Economics Quarterly and the International Journal of Business Environment, and his own research has been published in Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Inquiry, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Regulatory Economics, and elsewhere. Prieger spent a year in 2008-2009 as Senior Economist with the Federal Communications Commission, advising on broadband and telecom merger policy. He has consulted for major telecommunications and other companies on regulatory issues and presented at panels convened by the FCC.

Past Events