ABOUT US
The Master of Applied Economics (MAE) was created in response to the increasingly high demand from students seeking a terminal master’s degree in economics from UCLA and employers looking for candidates with advanced training. The MAE is designed to better prepare students with a baccalaureate in economics or a related field to serve the financial sector, federal and state governments, and private industry with sophisticated methods and rigorous models of analysis.
Our Community
UCLA’s Department of Economics is one of the highest-ranked in the world. Our young and active faculty are shaping policy and informing critical issues with their world-renowned research. The MAE program features instruction from mostly tenured faculty, providing students with the opportunity to engage in critical discussion on a diversity of topics. The Department’s alumni also play key roles in banking, consulting, finance, accounting, management, business, technology, marketing, and human resources – to name a few.
Undergraduates
MAE Class
Ph.D. students
Our Department
One of the largest and most notable in the country, the Department of Economics at UCLA is home to over 3,300 undergraduates and 110 doctoral students, who represent over 60 countries across the world. We are excited to have more students join this impressive group through our MAE program.
Our Campus
From our expansive medical complex, to more than 290 research centers, to libraries, museums, film and music archives, and art galleries, UCLA provides horizon-broadening, humanity-serving resources not only to its students but to every citizen of California.
Our City
UCLA is located in Westwood, 6 miles east of the Pacific Ocean and 13 miles west of downtown. Bordered by iconic neighborhoods — Bel Air, Brentwood, Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills — UCLA is a crossroads of ideas, cultures and limitless experiences and opportunities.
Our Administration
Aaron Tornell | Program Director
Aaron Tornell is a Professor of Economics at UCLA. He received his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987, specializing in International Finance and Political Economy. He taught economics at Columbia University and Harvard University prior to UCLA and served as the advisor to the Minister of Finance of Mexico from 1989 to 1991.
Dora Costa | Department Chair
Dora Costa is Professor and Chair in the Department of Economics at UCLA where she teaches economic history. She is also an associate director of the California Population Research Center, a research associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research’s (NBER) programs on the Development of the American Economy and on Aging and the co-director of the NBER working group Cohort Studies. Costa’s research focuses primarily on issues in labor economics, demography, and health, as interpreted over the long span of American economic history. Her work has covered a wide range of topics including: retirement, elderly living arrangements, determinants of older age mortality and morbidity, long-term trends in the health of the population, trends in leisure, CPI bias and social capital. Most of her research contrasts and compares the past with the present and examines why cross-sectional relations have been changing to better inform our understanding of the future. She is the author of numerous articles and the books “The Evolution of Retirement: An American Economic History 1880-1990″ and “Cowards and Heroes: The Social Face of War”.