Briana Ballis

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Assistant Professor

  • Economics | University of California, Merced

Briana Ballis is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, Merced. She earned her Ph.D. in Economics in 2020 from the University of California, Davis. Her research areas are labor economics and the economics of education. She strives to understand the educational investment decisions of less advantaged groups and how policies affect these decisions.  She holds a master’s degree in Economics and a bachelor’s degree in Economics and International Relations from Boston University.

Briana Ballis's content

Briana Ballis | Does Peer Motivation Influence Schooling Investments? Evidence from DACA
In this paper, Briana Ballis examines the spillover effects of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). This policy significantly increased the returns to schooling for undocumented youth, leaving the returns for everyone else unchanged. Leveraging administrative data from Los Angeles schools and variation in the concentration in DACA-eligible youth across schools, I also find significant positive effects of DACA on high school completion and student achievement among ineligible peer groups.