Ernest is an economist and quantitative researcher with over 10 years of experience designing, executing, and evaluating research projects. Currently, Ernest is a Senior Researcher and Project Director at the Colorado Evaluation & Action Lab, where he focuses on evaluating workforce development initiatives and state pilot programs by unlocking insights from administrative data. The Colorado Lab is an innovative government-research partnership housed at the University of Denver. He is also a IZA Institute of Labor Economics Research Fellow, contributing his expertise to the IZA’s global community of policy-focused labor economists.
Prior to this, Ernest was an Associate Teaching Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado Denver and at the China Agriculture University in Beijing, China. He also engaged in independent consulting work.
Ernest’s expertise covers the fields of labor and personnel economics, applied econometrics, demographic economics, and policy-focused applied microeconomics. He specializes in causal inference, data analysis, data PR, and communicating complex research.
Ernest’s overarching research agenda aims to better understand labor demand and supply dynamics, labor market competition, and how policies impact the workforce. His research leverages large data sets to extract insights on a variety of topics, including labor market competition, labor force participation, unemployment, labor mobility and migration, workforce development, job quality and turnover, job-lock, human capital, compensation, minimum wages, higher education, principal-agent problems, and the mismatch of supply and demand in the labor market. For more, please see his CV.
Recent policy evaluation work has included a first-of-its-kind documentation and tracking of earnings outcomes for participants in workforce training and upskilling programs with CEEMI, an RCT assessing the impact of no-interest loans, and an evaluation of the Colorado Community Aging in Place–Advancing Better Living for Elders pilot.
Ernest’s academic publications include work on how labor market conditions at the time of high school graduation impact college attendance and long-run educational attainment in the U.S., how the Chinese household registry system prevents labor mobility in the Chinese labor market, and work exploring the relationship between minimum wages and immigrant mobility. Ernest’s most recent work identifies the immediate impacts of minimum wage changes on labor force participation in the U.S.
Ernest has developed and taught a number of courses on both the University of Colorado Denver campus and the University of Colorado Denver’s Beijing campus, including courses in statistics, econometrics, mathematical economics, labor economics, demographic economics, and game theory.
Ernest has been responsible for providing clients with subject-matter expertise, assistance with grant proposals, data organization and analysis, and data PR. He has been relied upon to equip clients with reports, written materials, presentations on literature and methodologies, and package data into coherent, digestible content to support stakeholder objectives.
Ernest offers a variety of consulting services, including:
Designing and executing research plans
Empirical program evaluation
Data collection, cleaning, and organization
Causal and predictive econometric analyses
Economic analysis
Designing instructional materials and training individuals
Communicating complex statistical and economic concepts to a variety of audiences
For inquiries, please contact him at econernest@gmail.com