Sebastian Olascoaga serves as the Director of Research and Evaluation for the City of Boston and is a Lecturer in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. He established and now leads the City’s evaluation unit, which conducts impact evaluations, representative surveys, and economic analyses that inform budget and policy decisions across major city programs and services. His team also develops predictive and causal research tools to support departments on challenges ranging from housing and public health to climate resilience and city operations.

Sebastian’s research uses field experiments, causal inference, and applied econometrics to study how households, markets, and governments respond to shocks and policy change. His published and ongoing work spans housing, climate, health, and inequality, and appears in journals including the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Nature Communications, JAMA Network Open, among other outlets. His findings have also been covered in Bloomberg, NPR Marketplace, Forbes, MIT News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Previously, he served as Director of Economic Policy at Mexico’s Treasury Department, where he led research that contributed to the country’s first fiscal surplus in nearly a decade and informed national fiscal and trade policy. He also worked at the OECD on labor and inequality issues, and later partnered with technology companies such as Redfin and OptumLabs to conduct field experiments and causal analyses on housing markets, climate risks, and health outcomes. Sebastian holds a Ph.D. in Urban Economics and Policy from MIT, an M.Sc. in Applied Economics from the Paris School of Economics, and a B.A. in Economics from CIDE in Mexico City.

In his free time, Sebastian can be found at Fenway rooting for the Red Sox, rock climbing in New England, or searching for fresh waves in the Atlantic Ocean.

Shoot me an email to sebastian.olascoaga@gmail.com, sebastian.olascoaga@boston.gov, or olascoag@mit.edu - I am always happy to meet new people! You can also follow me on Linkedin.