Skip to Main Content Skip to Navigation Skip to Secondary Navigation Skip to Footer
Economics Summer Institute

Think like an economist by analyzing economic data and policies

Expand your knowledge of economic issues around the world

The UCLA Economics Precollege Summer Institute is a three-week-long program designed to expand your knowledge of critical economic issues affecting the United States and the world. Explore career options while earning college credit and studying at one of the top-ranked economics departments in the world.

Students in this program will learn about issues of economic policy and principles of economic analysis while simultaneously building their data analysis skills and strengthening their ability to think like an economist. Students will complete the program with the necessary foundation to apply these methodologies to understand society’s most pertinent issues.

Fees and Payment Info

The program fee includes the unit fees for the UCLA coursework offered as part of the program and thus varies by UC student status. In addition to the program fee, students are assessed other campus and administrative fees during the summer. This is a summary of fees that commonly apply to the selected student type.

Actual tuition and fees are subject to change by the University of California. Visit the fees, payment, and financial aid section for important disclaimer, as well as more details on fees, payment instructions, and information on delinquency, refunds, and financial aid.

Virtual Program Fees:
In addition to the program fee, students are assessed other campus and administrative fees during the summer.
High School Student: $1,800
Incoming UCLA Student: $1,476
Incoming UC Student: $1,476

Program Fee
$3,295.00
Registration Fee
$350.00
IEI Fee
$61.00
Document Fee (for first-time Summer Sessions students)
$50.00
Total Estimated Fees:
$3,756.00
* Fees only apply for certain student types

Meet your instructors

Dr. Randall R. Rojas

Adjunct Associate Professor, Instructor Economics Summer Institute (In-Person)

Dr. Randall R. Rojas is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Economics at UCLA. His research interests entail a highly interdisciplinary endeavor that transcends disciplinary barriers. His work in Economics is predominantly in the field of econophysics and financial engineering where he applies principles from physics, statistics, and psychology to the study of financial markets. He is also an active researcher in the field of Cognitive Science where he applies Bayesian methodologies to the modeling of knowledge acquisition by humans (human causal learning).

Dr. Rojas’s current work in Astrophysics (mainly astrostatistics) focuses on developing novel statistical analyses of the large-scale structure (LSS) of the universe to better understand its rich complexity and history. He is also highly committed to his teaching responsibilities and was awarded the ‘My Last Lecture Award’ by UCLA’s Alumni Scholars Club in 2015.

Image of Randall Rojas

Lee E. Ohanian

Distinguished Professor of Economics, Instructor Economics Summer Institute (Virtual)

Lee E. Ohanian is Professor of Economics, and Director of the Ettinger Family Program in Macroeconomic Research at UCLA, where he has taught since 199. He is an advisor to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and previously has advised other Federal Reserve Banks, Foreign Central Banks, and the National Science Foundation. He has been an economic advisor to state and national political campaigns. His research, which recently has been discussed in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other media sources, focuses on economic crises, and as been published widely in a number of peer-reviewed journals. He is a frequent columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Newsweek, and CBS Moneyline. He currently serves on the editorial boards of 3 journals. He previously served on the faculties of the Universities of Minnesota and Pennsylvania. He is co-director of the research initiative “Macroeconomics across Time and Space” at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Patrick Molligo

Instructor – Economics Summer Institute (Virtual)

Patrick Molligo is a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at UCLA. His research focuses on labor economics and economic history with an emphasis on vocational education in the United States. At UCLA he has taught classes on probability and statistics, econometrics, and data analysis, for which he received the departmental award for teaching excellence in 2022. Patrick received his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University before moving to Berlin, Germany for several years. Prior to graduate school, Patrick was a senior research assistant at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. where he supported numerous monetary policy briefings.