Rate My Professor Andrea Szabó

Andrea Szabó is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Houston, where she contributes to the Business & Economics discipline with her specialization in industrial organization and development economics. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota in 2010 and her M.Sc. in Economics and Finance from the Budapest University of Economics, Rajk College for Advanced Studies, in 2002. Her early career included positions as a Researcher at the Research Institute of Economics and Enterprises of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (2002-2005) and Research Assistant in the Economics Department at Harvard University (2003-2005). Since joining the University of Houston in 2010 as Assistant Professor, she has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2017.

Szabó's research employs structural approaches from industrial organization, such as demand estimation using big data, applied to development contexts to analyze public utilities, input allocation, firm financing, and consumer behavior under quantity discounts. Her extensive fieldwork in South Africa and Ghana has informed studies on water policy and manufacturing inefficiencies. Key publications comprise "The Value of Free Water: Analyzing South Africa’s Free Basic Water Policy" (Econometrica, 2015), "Reducing Nonpayment for Public Utilities: Experimental Evidence from South Africa" (Journal of Development Economics, 2015, with Gergely Ujhelyi), "None of the Above: Protest Voting in the World’s Largest Democracy" (Journal of the European Economic Association, 2021, with Gergely Ujhelyi and S. Chatterjee), "Net Neutrality and Consumer Demand in the Video On-demand Market" (Information Economics and Policy, 2022, with V. Pham), and "National Parks and Economic Development" (Journal of Public Economics, 2024, with Gergely Ujhelyi). She has obtained grants including a $25,000 Water Research Commission grant from South Africa (2012) and several University of Houston research awards. Szabó has presented at leading institutions like the University of Chicago, Yale University, and the Econometric Society meetings, and served as a keynote speaker at FPT University in Vietnam (2024). Additionally, she referees for top journals such as Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and teaches advanced courses in econometrics and industrial organization.