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Good thing Michael Droste didn’t let his introduction to economics sway him.

As an 8th grader in 2005, Droste was given $1,000 in play money to bet on company stocks in what the teacher billed as a lesson in economics. Told that his grade would be based solely on how his picks performed, Droste went all-in on a penny stock that he liked because it had something to do with video games — which he loved.

The share price dropped during the 3-month project and Droste got a C. His “bad” bet? Nvidia Corporation, one of the world’s most valuable companies.

The experience, says Droste wryly, “certainly didn’t drive me to pursue economics.”

Here’s what did: A middle class childhood in Iowa, where the decades-long decline in manufacturing and lack of after-school jobs during the 2008-09 recession made him wonder about the role of government policy in controlling economic volatility. Eventually, he got fed up with the opposing economic analyses of government programs that he saw on CNBC and Fox News — so he took an economics course as an undergraduate to find out for himself.

“Using the economics toolkit to make sense of the world just clicked with me,” says Droste, who had thought he would study law.

After graduating from Swarthmore College with dual degrees in economics and math, Droste spent two years as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Board before joining the ��ɫApp Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) as a predoctoral research fellow in 2016. He returned as a postdoctoral fellow in 2024, shortly after earning an economics PhD from Harvard, to work on SIEPR’s California Research Policy Initiative (CAPRI) and at .

Droste credits his time at SIEPR with cementing his love for research and an appreciation for the real-world impact it can have on people’s lives. “There are a bunch of people here who really care about economic policy and who understand that everyone would be better off if we were able to make more informed policy decisions,” he says.

One experience in particular — in which he traveled with SIEPR researchers to Seattle’s low-income neighborhoods as part of a study into the multiple drivers of economic mobility — stands out.

“SIEPR’s boots-on-the-ground approach to research was totally new to me and it really drove home that economic models are meant to reflect real problems that people grapple with on a day-to-day basis,” says Droste, who will become an assistant professor of economics at the University of Southern California in fall 2025.

“I love that I can talk to consumers, to central bankers, and to business owners, which is what makes economics — and any social science — special,” says Droste. “If I were, say, a physicist studying black holes, I couldn’t talk to black holes.”

Why the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building?

Michael chose to be photographed at SIEPR's home at the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building on Galvez Street. "SIEPR is the first place on campus I visited as a research assistant in 2016," he says. "And it was even better to see the citrus and palm trees in the courtyard again after six years in Massachusetts!"

Story by Krysten Crawford. Photos by Ryan Zhang. Published in 2024.