Jie Ma, Ph.D.

Contact Information

• jma1@unca.edu
• 251-6568
• 155 Karpen Hall

Office Hours

• Tuesday 8:30 am - 10:30 am
• Wednesday 10:30 am - 12:30 pm
• Note: Office hours also available by appointment.

Dr. Ma is a labor economist specializing in immigration economics. Dr. Ma holds a BA in Finance from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, as well as her MA and PhD in Economics from McGill University. She was one of 10 participants in the internationally competitive 4th IZA Young Scholar Program in Washington, DC in 2015. Ma regularly teaches Intro to Economic Analysis, Principle of Micro- and Macroeconomics, Microeconomic Principles for Engineers, as well as Corporate Finance, International Trade and Finance, Econometrics, The Economic Impact of COVID-19, the seminar Immigration Economics, and Senior Research in Economics. Ma’s dedication to students is evident in that 12 of her 14 students in senior seminar and research classes went on to publish their research papers at the undergraduate research journal and were nominated to graduate with the university research scholar. Her research interests range from migration in developing countries to career prospects of overeducated Americans, from policy assessment to evaluation of statistical projection methods used by government agencies. Dr. Ma’s current works revolve around the theme of labor: the determinants of overeducation and underemployment in the US labor market, the roles of social skills in closing the gender wage gap in recent years, and the relative importance of geographic and occupational mobility to native workers when they react to foreign labor competition. Dr. Ma’s works have been presented at Barcelona GSE Summer Forum, published in Labor Economics, with two papers under review for publication, and another forthcoming article, ‘Geographic v.s. Occupational Mobility: How Natives Adjust to Immigration-Induced Labor Supply Shocks’, in progress.