Armando Rangel Colina

Residency: September 2022 – May 2023

Research Project: Welfare and Competition in Mexico’s gasoline market

Research Interests: Policy evaluation, energy and environmental economics, industrial organization, and applied econometrics

Armando is a Ph.D. candidate in agricultural and resource economics at UC Davis. His research focuses on key industrial organization issues in energy markets. His dissertation seeks to answer policy-relevant issues in gas markets for both the U.S. and Mexico: What are the consumer welfare effects of price liberalization in Mexico’s gasoline market? What is the effect of an additional competitor in the choice to differentiate product attributes in the retail gasoline industry? Has refinery consolidation disproportionately increased refining margins in California? Armando uses structural models that involve the estimation of fundamental preferences and strategic effects. He specializes in demand estimation of differentiated products through the use of discrete choice models with heterogeneous agents.

Before joining the Ph.D. program, Armando worked at the Central Bank of Mexico as the Head Trader for the Foreign Exchange and Commodities trading group. He led a team whose main objective was to invest a $20 billion portfolio across 11 different currencies. During his tenure at the Central Bank, he took part in the world's largest public oil hedging program in 2014, 2015 and 2016 resulting in a payoff of more than $6 billion for the Mexican government.