Philip Oreopoulos

Philip Oreopoulos is a professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, as well as a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and co-chairs the Education sector at the Jameel Poverty Action Lab. He has also held visiting appointments at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is editor at the Journal of Labor Economics.

He has published widely in top economics journals on a variety of topics pertaining to post-secondary education, including several widely cited papers based on experimental evidence of the determinants of student success at the University of Toronto.

His research is characterized by a strong emphasis on research design and experimental validity. This reinforces the Faculty’s objective of both innovating on the basis of the best existing evidence and building experimental assessment into the design of Arts & Science initiatives that support student success.

His current work focuses on education policy, especially the application of behavioral economics to education and child development. He often examines this field by initiating and implementing large-scale field experiments with the goal of producing convincing evidence for public policy decisions.

Professor Oreopoulos was appointed as the Special Advisor on Economics of Higher Education in March 2020. As Special Advisor, he will provide advice to the Dean and the Faculty on matters pertaining to evidence-based determinants of undergraduate student success, especially drawing on insights and evidence from the economics of higher education and related disciplines. To support this, he will begin his appointment by conducting a review of the determinants of academic success in the early years, including an assessment of student admissions and recruitment.


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