Vance Ginn Graduated with a doctorate in Economics in 2013

I happily earned my doctorate in economics from the Department of Economics at Texas Tech University in 2013. My time as a teaching assistant there, which I taught multiple classes each semester, was some of my greatest learning experiences besides my classwork and dissertation. The department was always there to provide me with the tools needed to succeed, including academically, professionally, and personally.

I have many fond memories of working with one of my dissertation advisors and personal mentor, Dr. Ronald Gilbert, who taught me much about life and economics. My research started with working with Dr. Gilbert on learning how markets work with the relationship between oil and gasoline prices. This helped me use my fields of monetary theory, international trade, and labor economics to add contributions to those fields over time and publish in multiple academic journals.

But after graduating and teaching at Sam Houston State University for a couple of years, I took a different direction by getting into public policy as I wanted to do research on topics that can be influential and work to make them happen today. This brought me to my first job at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is a free market think tank in Austin, Texas, in 2013, where I currently work as the Chief Economist. I’ve worked on many policies to help let people prosper. From 2019 to 2020, I worked as the Associate Director for Economic Policy of the Office of Management and Budget at the Executive Office of the President. These experiences have helped me learn much about economics that I had been taught while in the department of Texas Tech University.

The desire to see me succeed by those in the Department of Economics like Dr. Gilbert and Dr. Rashid Al-Hmoud made my story of being a first-generation college graduate a success. And I am continuing to build on those lessons today as there is much more in the world that must be evaluated from an economic lens to find the best ways to let people prosper.