Joaquín Alfredo-Angel Rubalcaba is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Policy at UNC Chapel Hill. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of New Mexico, and is an alumnus of the RWJF doctoral fellows program. His areas of interests broadly include health and labor economics. Specifically, he has explored the health and labor market outcomes among underrepresented and disadvantaged communities, while developing new empirical techniques to investigate the economic mechanisms and public policies driving these outcomes.

Currently, Dr. Rubalcaba’s research addresses the role of public policy in the overall socioeconomic wellbeing of immigrant communities. In this line of research, he investigates how policies such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and the Real ID Act have had an impact on labor supply behavior and health insurance coverage.

In another line of research, Dr. Rubalcaba is exploring new empirical techniques to estimate economic values. This particular research has demonstrated an empirically tractable method to assign economic value to health conditions, such as diabetes, ultimately increasing the economic tools used to inform policy decisions.