Victor Ortega was born in Querétaro, Mexico. He holds a B.A. in Economics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he also worked as a teaching and research assistant. As an undergraduate, he spent a quarter abroad at the University of California, Davis. Before joining Columbia University, Victor was a predoctoral fellow at the University of St Andrews, working with David Escamilla Guerrero.
At Columbia, Victor is a Predoctoral Staff Associate in Economics, working under the supervision of Eric Verhoogen and Joseph Stiglitz at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue. His research interests span labor economics, inequality, firms and productivity, mechanism design, and experimental methods. He has contributed to research and policy work at Mexico’s Ministry of Finance (SHCP) and the National Council of Humanities, Sciences and Technologies (CONAHCYT).
Outside of research, he enjoys movies, music, continental philosophy, science-fiction, road race cycling, basketball, and professional wrestling.