Michalopoulos is MDRC’s chief economist and directs the Youth Development, Criminal Justice, and Employment policy area. For more than three decades, he has studied social policies aimed at helping low-income families achieve better economic, health, and social outcomes. He currently serves as co-principal investigator on several national studies, including projects testing employment services for low-income families (with a focus on individuals with behavioral health issues), individualized services for fathers, and home visiting programs.
In recent years, he has led research on innovative ways to improve engagement in fatherhood programs, coordinated care programs for high-cost Medicaid recipients in Colorado and New York, and telephonic care management for people with depression. He has also co-led major demonstration projects, including a national study of expanded health care coverage for recently uninsured individuals.
A central focus of his work has been on providing methodological rigor in social policy evaluations. This includes recent publications discussing why Bayesian statistics might be the right approach for making policy decisions and how minimum detectable effects are often misinterpreted.
Prior to joining MDRC in 1997, Michalopoulos earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Virginia Tech from 1992 to 1997.
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