Research expertise: economics of crime, law and economics, applied econometrics

Bocar Ba, economics assistant professor, studies police accountability. His work has taken a close look at where breakdowns happen in the criminal justice system, following cases from arrests to depositions. Using insight from labor economics literature, he seeks to understand police use of force, overall police officer behavior and what cities want from their local law enforcement. His research, funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Pipeline Grant, has been featured in the Journal of Labor Economics and American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings.

Ba earned his bachelor’s in economics and finance at the Université du Québec à Montréal and master’s in economics at the University of British Columbia. He completed his Ph.D. in public policy at the University of Chicago in 2018 and was hired as a one-year postdoctoral scholar in the economics department at Duke University. He was then appointed as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School Quattrone Center where he spent a year focused on criminal justice system research. He’s excited to join UCI’s Department of Economics where he looks forward to working with leading interdisciplinary scholars and the university’s diverse student population.