Randall Akee

Randall Akee is a nonresident fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings and a professor in the Department of Public Policy and American Indian Studies at UCLA. Prior to that, Akee was an assistant professor of Economics at Tufts University. Akee completed his doctorate at Harvard University in June 2006.  Akee is an applied microeconomist and has worked in the areas of labor economics, economic development, and migration. He has conducted research on the determinants of migration and human trafficking, the effect of changes in household income on educational attainment and obesity, the effect of political institutions on economic development, and the role of property institutions on investment decisions. He has conducted research on several American Indian reservations, Canadian First Nations, and Pacific Island nations in addition to working in various Native Hawaiian communities. Akee also spent several years working for the State of Hawaii Office of Hawaiian Affairs Economic Development Division. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has served on the University of California Office of the President’s Native American Advisory Council. Previously, he served on the National Advisory Council on Race, Ethnic, and Other Populations at the U.S. Census Bureau. From 2017-2019, Akee was a Rubinstein Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. In 2020, Akee with his colleagues founded the Association for Economics Research of/by/for/with Indigenous Peoples (AERIP) which is the first organization dedicated to fostering economics research related to Indigenous Peoples. For the year 2022-2023, Akee served as a senior economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers working on Labor and Social Inclusion topics.