CSMGEP Profiles: Salvador Contreras

The Right Tool for the Big Questions

Salvador Contreras grew up in Ontario, California, a suburb about 40 miles east of Los Angeles. His family was middle class, but in going about his daily life in Southern California he saw both wealth and poverty. As he observed that contrast, he also started to wonder why and how it came to exist.

“The question that came to mind was, what are the drivers that can explain these variations in outcomes? Is it resources? Is it drive? Is it opportunity?” he recalls. “Those sort of questions bubbled up from growing up in Ontario.”

Eventually, economics gave Contreras the tools to address those questions. He is now a professor of economics at the Robert C. Vackar College of Business and Entrepreneurship and associate dean of the graduate college at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. But it took him a while to find his way into that field of study.

He entered college, first at Chaffey Community College and then at the University of La Verne, without a clear idea for a major. But a spirited political science professor snagged Contreras’ interest in the subject and, in a roundabout way, laid the groundwork for his eventual career.

Political science, Contreras says, “helped me think about economics later on because of the different aspects that make up how society organizes itself and the outcomes that we observe as a result of that.” He moved closer to economics in grad school at Claremont University, where he enrolled in the master’s program “Politics, Economics, and Business.” It was friends who convinced him to pursue a Ph.D., also at Claremont, in economics: “I gave in to peer pressure,” he jokes.

But he turns serious when he talks about the impact mentors, including those friends and that early political science professor, have had on his career.

“In some sense, I feel like I’m lucky in that things just happened to have fallen into place for me,” he reflects. “I was still thinking about these bigger problems, but I had no idea how to answer them. And it just happens to be that economics is one vessel to try to understand and try to find answers to those sort of questions. And it just happens to be that I was nudged in that direction.”

Many of the bigger problems Contreras has tried to address in his research are tied to access to banking, and what happens when that access is cut off. He is interested not so much in the causes of bank failure, but rather in the effects on people, businesses, and communities. He’s found that bank failures have a much wider reach than just where the bank’s headquarters are located. When local branches go dark, small businesses feel it the most, losing relationships with individuals who make loan decisions, having to adjust to new underwriting standards, and weathering different priorities from lenders. Those small businesses, in turn, may lose the chance to expand and to hire more staff, which affects individuals and communities.

Border economics has been another of Contreras’ long-term interests. He saw it in play as he grew up in Southern California, and it was a focus while he was director for UT-Rio Grande Valley’s Center for Border Economic Studies from 2015 to 2022. With his office at UT-Rio Grande Valley about 15 miles from the U.S.-Mexico line, he continues to have a front-row seat. With the Center for Border Economic Studies, Contreras looked closely at the issues civic and business leaders consider as they work to fuel economic growth and nurture a culture in which crossing the border to make and spend money is common. That commerce is key in a large region with no key industry.

“There's a lot of retail, there's a lot of services, there's some trade, but there's no real industry here,” he explains. “So local economic developers are always worried about how do you attract employers to this region? What are the selling points that we can give prospective firms as they think about where to set up shop? Those are the sort of things that I was exploring.”

Both as an educator and an economist, Contreras is also interested in the effects of automation. His current research is sizing up how automation has shown up in the post-COVID job recovery.

“COVID had this really large shock to the labor market. So many people lost their jobs,” he explains. “When jobs came back, it wasn't the same jobs that came back. The jobs that could potentially be automated were more likely to be automated. And the jobs that were least likely to be automated, those are the ones that came back in full force.” Now, he says, he’s looking at the implications of COVID-era adoption of automation for the future of the labor force, broken down by metro area and the occupations people have — or had — in those places.

Contreras is also interested in the future of the economics profession, and he sees both challenges and opportunities in his role as graduate school associate dean.

“I spend a lot of time thinking about processes and how do you make education more accessible?” he says. “How do you reduce frictions? How do you make sure that students don't just fall by the wayside? How do we improve the pipeline of students coming into a graduate program and exiting with a graduate degree?”

At all levels and in all fields, he says, it is vital to remember to include outcomes when discussing the nuts and bolts. “As undergrad students, usually you're asked to think about the very hard problem of learning the tools and maybe spend less time thinking about the interesting applications of how those tools are going to be applied,” he says. “The models and the theory allow you to ask those interesting questions, and to come up with the solution. So, the most rewarding part of the field is to say, ‘Look, if you do X, why will Y occur?’”

As Contreras sees it, there’s plenty of room in economics for fun, too. One five-star review from a student on ratemyprofessors.com cited his “dad jokes,” among other strengths, and another read, in full, “Bro is simply him.”

Relationships — with students, with colleagues, and with the communities he studies — are important to Contreras. All along, they’ve been the driving force in his study of economics.

“As a social scientist, as a person who thinks about people, I like to think that the most rewarding aspect of the job has been the people that I've met along the way,” he reflects. “I don't think I would've gotten to the point that I'm at now without my mentors and my peers that have helped me along the way, who have been role models to me that I've been able to reach out to. They made the job fun. They made the experience something that I'm driven to do.”

Proust Questionnaire
A salon and parlor game of the 19th century made famous by Marcel Proust’s answers, the Proust Questionnaire (adapted here) gets to the heart of things ...

What’s on your nightstand?
My cell phone
 
What job would you like to have if you weren’t an economist?
Basketball player
 
What is an ideal day? 
Ending the workday on the basketball court at the University REC 
 
What trait do you deplore in other people? 
Resigned to accept a fate or world they do not agree with
 
What trait do you most admire in people? 
Drive for a better self and world
 
What is your favorite extravagance?
Computer hardware
 
What is your worst habit?
Sweets
 
Which talent would you most like to have?
To rock karaoke night
 
What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done? 
Being a dad