Hamid Mohtadi is Professor of Economics at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Mohtadi received his PhD in economics from the University of Michigan, his Master’s in physics from Columbia University, and his BA, also in Physics, from Miami University of Ohio where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He has previously taught at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Policy (SIPA), Barnard College, and the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He has an ongoing research appointment with the University of Minnesota Department of Applied Economics. He has also been a visitor at the Economics Departments, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as the University of Giessen in Germany.  For 2022-23 he is on sabbatical, visiting International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington DC, studying the impact of climate change on economic growth versus economic activity.

Mohtadi has published extensively in several areas of economics including public policy, economic growth, climate change, international trade, economic development, economics of inequality, political economy of institutions and natural resources, and more recently on the role of extreme risk in policy making where he has been a pioneer in understanding and analyzing the dilemma of rational policymaking when data produce heavy tail distributions that defy the forming of expectations. His articles have appeared in such journals as the Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Development Economics, American Economic Review, Economic Inquiry, Economic Letters, Cambridge Journal of Economics, World Development, and many others.

Mohtadi has presented his research widely and globally, including in Chile, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and others.  Several of his papers have received Best Paper Awards in both national and international conferences.  Mohtadi is a Research Fellow and also serves as Chair of the Advisory Board at the Economic Research Forum (ERF), a thinktank composed of renowned economists around the world that analyzes various aspects of the economies of the Middle East and North Africa and is attended by ministerial level policymakers.

Mohtadi’s most current focus is on four specific areas:  The productivity effects of climate change, heat waves, and droughts; the analysis of health policymaking in light of the extreme risks of global contagions such as COVID; the economics of inequality; and the role of risk in globalization and trade.