Rate My Professor Aimee Chin

Aimee Chin is the Department Chair and a Professor of Economics at the University of Houston, where she contributes to Business & Economics through her expertise in labor economics and development economics. Her research focuses on the effects of human capital investments, the economic and social integration of U.S. immigrants, and the impacts of educational and social policies on economic outcomes and well-being. Chin earned an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College in 1994, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001. She has been on the University of Houston faculty since Fall 2001, initially as an Assistant Professor until Summer 2007, then Associate Professor until Summer 2014, full Professor since Fall 2014, and Department Chair since Fall 2025.

Chin has received notable awards including the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (1996-1999), MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Inequality and Economic Performance Fellowship (2000-2001), and NICHD/NIH Research Grant as Principal Investigator (2006-2008). She serves as a Research Associate in the NBER's Economics of Education Program, Member of the Board of Editors of the American Economic Review since 2021 (previously American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2012-2020), and co-organizer of the annual NBER Immigrants and the US Economy Conference since 2021. Her key publications include "Language Skills and Earnings: Evidence from Childhood Immigrants" with Hoyt Bleakley (Review of Economics and Statistics, 2004); "Long-Run Labor Market Effects of Japanese-American Internment during World War II on Working-Age Male Internees" (Journal of Labor Economics, 2005); "Can Redistributing Teachers Across Schools Raise Educational Attainment? Evidence from Operation Blackboard in India" (Journal of Development Economics, 2005); "Technical Change and the Demand for Skills During the Second Industrial Revolution: Evidence from the Merchant Marine, 1891-1912" with Chinhui Juhn and Peter Thompson (Review of Economics and Statistics, 2006); "The Returns to English-Language Skills in India" with Mehtabul Azam and Nishith Prakash (Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2013); "Impact of Bilingual Education Programs on Limited English Proficient Students and Their Peers: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Texas" with Meltem Daysal and Scott Imberman (Journal of Public Economics, 2013); and forthcoming "Unlocking Occupational Opportunity: The Labor Market Effects of DACA" with Kalena Cortes and Camila Morales (AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2026).