Michela Giorcelli is an Associate Professor (with tenure) at the Department of Economics of UCLA. She is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a research affiliate at CEPR, CESifo, IZA, J-PAL and CCPR. She holds a PhD in Economics from Stanford University.

Prof. Giorcelli is an economic historian and an applied-micro economist, whose research focuses on the managerial and technological drivers of productivity and innovation in the long-run run. Her book project "Professionals and Productivity: the Diffusion of Soft Technologies during and after WWII", under contract with Princeton University Press, analyzes the role of WWII in spurring management practices adoption in the US and their diffusion in Europe and Japan in the war aftermath.

Her research has been awarded the Kiel Excellence Award in Global Economic Affairs (2020) for contribution to the fields of economic history and innovation, the Gerschenkron Prize (2017), and the Kauffman Foundation Fellowship Award (2016). She has received the UCLA Warren C. Scoville Award for Distinguished Teaching.