Sergio Urzua

Vice Presidency Candidate

Short bio

Sergio Urzua is a Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland. His research centers on labor economics, with a particular emphasis on how abilities, skills, and uncertainty shape schooling decisions, labor market outcomes, social behavior, and inequality. His applied work includes the analysis of selection models with unobserved heterogeneity as well as the evaluation of social programs in both developing and developed countries. Professor Urzua’s research has appeared in leading economics journals, including general-interest outlets. 
Since 2014, he has served as the director of the LACEA Labor Network. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), and an International Research Fellow at Clapes-UC. Additionally, he serves on the board of the Research Institute for Development, Growth, and Economics (RIDGE). He was a member of the Executive Director Committee of LACEA (2015-2019), Associate Editor of Economia (2015), Co-editor of Economia (2016-18), and Editor-in-Chief of Economia (2018-2021), The Journal of LACEA.
At the University of Maryland, Professor Urzua teaches Ph.D.-level Labor Economics and undergraduate courses on Inequality and Poverty, Econometrics, and Policy and Program Evaluation. Since 2021, he has also taught in the American Economic Association Summer Training Program at Howard University. 
He received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Chile and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.