The Economic Policy Institute is pleased to announce journalist and economics commentator Pedro Nicolai da Costa as the institute’s new communications director. He will work to promote EPI’s research and policy proposals through traditional and digital media.
“I am delighted to welcome Pedro to the EPI team,” said EPI President Thea Lee. “For years, he has been an important voice in the economic discourse—and his deep knowledge of economics and passion for creating a more equitable economy will be tremendous assets to EPI.”
Da Costa has been writing about economics and financial markets since 2001, at Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and Business Insider. He was a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics from 2014 to 2016. His work has focused on issues close to EPI’s mission: labor markets, Federal Reserve policy, inequality and race.
“I have always been a big fan of EPI’s research because it fills a major vacuum in a field that often places the interests of businesses over those of workers,” said da Costa. “EPI was first in calling attention to major sources of economic strain that are now widely denounced: stagnant wages that became divorced from productivity gains, steep income inequality exacerbated by anti-union policies, and trade agreements that failed to consider labor rights and environmental protections. Economic policy is at a crucial inflection point as we enter 2019 and I am excited to join EPI at a time when its voice and its ideas could not be more vital.”
In 2010, da Costa co-authored “Cozy Ties at Club Fed,” a report that prompted the central bank to adopt a more transparent communications policy that includes regular post-meeting press conferences with the Fed chair. His reporting on the failure of some academic economists to disclose financial industry ties resulted in the American Economics Association’s adoption of a new code of conduct. Both articles received journalism awards.
Da Costa studied sociology and political science as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, and earned his Master’s in International Relations from the University of California in San Diego.