Oliko Vardishvili

Biography

Oliko Vardishvili is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, Irvine. Her research examines how taxes, transfers, and investments in education and health shape inequality and economic opportunity. She uses quantitative economic models to study the design of public policy, including income-tax progressivity, financial aid, college completion, and human-capital investment.

She also leads a Food Is Medicine research initiative based at UC Irvine. This developing program brings together researchers and implementation partners to evaluate nutrition benefits for adults with diet-related chronic conditions. Her proposed comparative-effectiveness research examines alternative benefit designs for Medicaid populations, with attention to diet quality, health outcomes, and healthcare use. She earned her Ph.D. in Economics at the European University Institute and was a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University's Cowles Foundation before joining UC Irvine.

Education

• Ph.D. in Economics, European University Institute, Florence, Italy, 2021
• M.Res. in Economics, European University Institute, Florence, Italy, 2016
• M.Sc. in Economics, Konstanz University, Germany, 2015
• B.A. in Economics, Tbilisi State University, Georgia, 2013

Distinctions

• Postdoctoral fellowship, Cowles Foundation at Yale University, 2021-2022
• AWE Fellow, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, 2024