Biography
Michael Choi, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California, Irvine, where he has been on the faculty since 2018. His research spans monetary economics, microeconomic theory, search theory, and industrial organization, with particular focus on the intersection of information economics and market structure in both goods and financial markets. Prior to joining UC Irvine, he held positions at the University of Iowa and as an Associate Member at Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
Choi has published extensively in economics journals, including articles in Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Journal of Economic Theory. His work examines topics ranging from consumer search and price competition to the dynamics of money adoption and cryptocurrency mining, as well as the role of information design in decentralized markets. He has also contributed to the development of continuous-time methods in monetary economics and the analysis of market power in monetary economies.
Choi received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013. He serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Public Economic Theory and has been a frequent presenter at conferences and seminars internationally. At UC Irvine, he has co-organized multiple workshop series and seminars in macroeconomics and industrial organization, and has received teaching recognition including the Winter 2020 Outstanding Teaching Award from the School of Social Sciences.
Return to topEducation
- Ph.D. in Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2013
- M.A. in Economics, Boston University, 2007
Distinctions
- Associate Editor, Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2021
- Winter 2020 Outstanding Teaching Award, School of Social Sciences, UC-Irvine, 2020
- P.E.T.E. Award (Professional Excellence in the Training of Economists) for Graduate Student Advising, University of Iowa, 2016
- Old Gold Fellowship, University of Iowa, 2014
- Anna Morris Ely Teaching Award, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2012
Areas of Expertise
- Monetary Economics
- Consumer Search Behavior
- Frictional Goods Markets
- Ordinal Aggregation Theory
- Money Mining Dynamics
- Retail Banking Deposits Channel
- Price Discrimination Decentralized Markets
Recent Publications
- Michael Choi, Guillaume Rocheteau, “Information Acquisition and Price Discrimination in Dynamic, Decentralized Markets” (opens in new tab), Review of Economic Dynamics, vol. 53, pp. 1-46, 2024.
- Michael Choi, Guillaume Rocheteau, “Foundations of Market Power in Monetary Economies” (opens in new tab), Journal of Economic Theory, vol. 222, 2024.
- Michael Choi, Fan Liang, “Learning and Money Adoption” (opens in new tab), Journal of Political Economy, vol. 131, no. 7, pp. 1772-1796, 2023.
- Michael Choi, Guillaume Rocheteau, “A Model of Retail Banking and the Deposits Channel of Monetary Policy” (opens in new tab), Journal of Monetary Economics, vol. 139, pp. 127-147, 2023.
- Michael Choi, Guillaume Rocheteau, “New Monetarism in Continuous Time: Methods and Applications” (opens in new tab), Economic Journal, vol. 131, no. 634, pp. 658-696, 2021.
- Michael Choi, “A Note on Monotone Comparative Statics for Monetary Directed Search Models” (opens in new tab), Macroeconomic Dynamics, vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 1625-1634, 2021.
- Michael Choi, Guillaume Rocheteau, “Money Mining and Price Dynamics” (opens in new tab), American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 246-294, 2021.
- Michael Choi, Guillaume Rocheteau, “More on Money Mining and Price Dynamics: The Case of Divisible Currencies” (opens in new tab), Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, vol. 2021, pp. 104152, 2021.
- Michael Choi, Zach Bethune, Randall Wright, “Frictional Goods Markets: Theory and Applications” (opens in new tab), Review of Economic Studies, vol. 87, no. 2, pp. 691-720, 2020.
- Michael Choi, Kyungmin Kim, Marilyn Pease, “Optimal Information Design for Search Goods”, AEA Papers and Proceedings, vol. 109, pp. 550-56, 2019.
- Michael Choi, “Imperfect Information Transmission and Adverse Selection in Asset Markets”, Journal of Economic Theory, vol. 176, pp. 619-649, 2018.
- Michael Choi, Anovia Dai, Kyungmin Kim, “Consumer Search and Price Competition” (opens in new tab), Econometrica, vol. 86, no. 4, pp. 1257-1281, 2018.
- Michael Choi, Lones Smith, “Ordinal Aggregation Results via Karlin's Variation Diminishing Property”, Journal of Economic Theory, vol. 168, pp. 1-11, 2017.
Contact Information
Website: https://michaelyfchoi.weebly.com/
Email: yufaic@uci.edu
Phone: (949) 824-0641
Address: 3181 Social Science Plaza A
Return to topThis profile was created with the help of AI.
Last updated on 4/6/2026.