Vance Larsen

Vance Larsen started the Evans School Ph.D. program in Public Policy and Management in 2016. Prior to joining the program, he earned a Master of Science in Consumer Behavior at Purdue University, where he was involved in research on financial services for the poor in Colombia and Taiwan. Vance also holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Gonzaga University, with concentrations in Entrepreneurship and Economics and a minor in History. Vance’s dissertation will examine the decision to claim Social Security retirement benefits through a behavioral economics and judgment/decision-making lens. His other research interests include household financial decision making, specifically the use of fringe banking products and services, such as payday loans, and the impact of unexpected financial shocks on low-income individuals and households. Vance obtained the Statistics Concentration through the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences (CSSS) as part of his PhD coursework.

He has been a TA for several courses throughout his time at Evans, winning the ESO Outstanding Teaching Assistant award in 2018-2019. He has been a teaching assistant for Quantitative Analysis 1 (527), Quantitative Analysis 2 (528), Financial Management and Budgeting (522) and Microeconomic Management Analysis (517). He was also the lead instructor for Quantitative Analysis 2 (528) in the Spring of 2021. Currently, Vance is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the Seattle University Albers School of Business and Economics.