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Riley Acton is an assistant professor of economics. She is an applied microeconomist who specializes in the economics of education.

Her research is focused on understanding how students, families, and institutions make education decisions and how public policy shapes both those decisions and their long-term effects. This research agenda includes studying how college costs, geography, and local labor market conditions shape students' postsecondary enrollment and completion, and how decisions made by higher education institutions themselves shape educational and societal outcomes. In recent and ongoing work, she is studying how rising political polarization has influenced college-going decisions, how employers respond to new bachelor's degrees awarded by community colleges, and how changes to introductory economics coursework affect students' major choices.

Her research has been published in outlets such as the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Human Resources, and Economics of Education Review, funded by the National Science Foundation and several philanthropic organizations, and covered by the New York Times, The Economist, and NPR. She is also a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) and currently serves on the editorial board of Education Finance and Policy.

Curriculum Vitae