The Department of Economics, located in the School of Social Sciences at Rice University, is a center of excellence for research and teaching in economics. Its faculty is committed to advancing knowledge in all areas of theoretical, empirical, and applied economics, to fostering a better understanding of the importance of economic research in the formulation and assessment of public policy, and to training students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in economic theory and empirical methods and their applications in a wide variety of fields.
Following the launch of the Rice Initiative for the Study of Economics (RISE) and the ensuing expansion of its faculty, the department has established itself as a leading institution for structural empirical microeconomics. The structural approach to empirical economics emphasizes the importance of a rigorous combination of economic theory, econometrics, and data analysis to address substantively important issues in all areas of economics.
The Department of Economics Welcomes Three New Faculty Members
Jeff Dominitz joined the Department of Economics at Rice University in 2025 as our first Professor in the Practice. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and his research combines statistical decision theory and partial identification methods, with applications to predictive algorithm evaluation, optimal sample design, and political polling. Jeff has devoted much of his career to survey research, particularly the elicitation of subjective expectations, and has published extensively on topics at the intersection of econometrics and behavioral measurement. He has held faculty positions at the University of Michigan, Caltech, USC, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of San Francisco. Beyond academia, Jeff co-founded Resolution Economics LLC, served as Principal Researcher at Education Analytics, Senior Economist at RAND, and Senior Fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago. He also led the football analytics group as Director of Statistics for the Philadelphia Eagles after a brief stint as Football Research Manager for Washington’s NFL team.
Guillaume A. Pouliot joined the Department of Economics at Rice University in 2025 as an Associate Professor. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and an M.S. in Statistics from the University of Chicago. Guillaume’s research develops statistical and econometric methods for nonstandard problems in public policy and economics, as well as extensions of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques for policy applications. His work lies at the interface of econometrics, optimization, and AI, with publications in leading journals such as Econometrica, the Journal of Econometrics, and the Journal of the American Statistical Association. Before joining Rice, Guillaume was an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and has held visiting positions at Harvard University. He is also a researcher at CIRANO.
Kiana Yektansani joined the Department of Economics at Rice University in 2025 as an Assistant Teaching Professor and Director of Online Learning. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Washington State University and specializes in applied and theoretical economics, with research spanning environmental policy design, product differentiation, and the use of machine learning to understand economic attitudes and behaviors. Her published work covers topics such as environmental beliefs, remittances and growth, government policies, and immigration modeling using AI. Before joining Rice, Kiana was a Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of the MA in Applied Economics Program at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she taught a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses and received multiple teaching awards.