Alex Franks is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics and Applied Probability at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include causal inference and sensitivity analysis, with recent applications in demographic panel data. His methodological work relates to latent variable modeling and covariance estimation, missing data and measurement error, and Bayesian statistics.

Matías Strehl-Pessina is a fourth-year PhD student in Economics at UCSB. He obtained his BA and Master’s degree in Economics from Universidad de la República, in Uruguay, as well as a Master’s degree in Economics at UCSB. His research focuses primarily on Public Economics, Labor economics, and Political Economy, with special focus on inequality. His current research focuses on the effect of tax policies on different aspects of the economy--such as income inequality and the wage distribution-- and on individuals and firms’ behavior. His research also focuses on trying to understand what shapes people's preferences for redistribution. Finally, he is interested in economic mobility, opportunity, and its main determinants. He has also a keen interest in sports, particularly in futbol(soccer), tennis, and table tennis.