Founding Fellow Strategist
Macroeconomist and forecaster. UCLA Anderson Forecast economist focused on the U.S., China and Southern California economies.
Dr. William Yu joined the UCLA Anderson Forecast in 2011. He focuses on analyzing and forecasting the U.S., China, and Southern California economies. His research interests span a wide range of economic and financial issues including time-series econometrics, data analytics, housing markets, and macroeconomics. He teaches time series and predictive analytics in the Master of Business Analytics Program at UCLA Anderson School and the Master of Data Science Program at Harvard Extension, along with instructing data science certificate courses at UCLA Extension. In 2019, he received the distinguished instructor award for digital technology from UCLA Extension.
He has published over a dozen research articles in the Journal of Forecasting, International Journal of Forecasting, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, and others. He developed the City Human Capital Index, the Los Angeles City Employment Estimate, and the Microbusiness Activity Index tracking online small-business activities across the country, and authored the US–China economic reports. He is frequently cited in local, national and overseas media. A sought-after speaker, he has contributed his expertise to events including the biannual Cathay Bank US–China economic outlook seminars, the Woo Greater China Business Conference, and the National Association for Business Economics.
He received his bachelor’s degree in finance from National Taiwan University. In 2006, he received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Washington, where he was also an economics instructor and won two distinguished teaching awards. From 2006 to 2011, he served as an assistant and then associate professor of economics at Winona State University, teaching forecasting methods, managerial economics, international economics, and macroeconomics. He served as a faculty advisor for Applied Management Research and Business Creation Programs at UCLA Anderson School from 2018 to 2023.