Anya Samek

Associate Professor of Economics
Rady School of Management
University of California, San Diego
anyasamek@gmail.com LinkedIn Twitter The Conversation Razom for Ukraine

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I am an Associate Professor of Economics and Strategy at the Rady School of Management at UCSD. I am also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and an affiliate of the FAIR Centre at the Norwegian School of Economics. I completed my Ph.D. in Economics at Purdue University and my postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago. In 2020, I was the recipient of the Vernon L. Smith Ascending Scholar Prize.

I use experiments to address questions about how economic theory can predict behavior in the areas of education, philanthropy and health. I was a co-founder of the Science of Philanthropy Initiative - a $5m project that brings together academics and charities to conduct experiments that change our understanding of how we do philanthropy. Over the past 10 years, I have managed CHECC, a large-scale education study that follows 2,000 families who were randomly assigned to receive various early childhood programs.

I have published over 60 articles in peer-reviewed journals and they have been featured in popular media outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, FiveThirtyEight, Today.com, NPR and the Freakonomics podcast. Read more about my work here.

Selected Research

Research at CHECC

Ten years ago, we launched the Chicago Heights Early Childhood Center (CHECC), a field experiment to understand the impact of early childhood education interventions on reducing the academic achievement gap. [ Visit CHECC ]. A few publications below:

Media Coverage

Anya Samek