Cassandra Guarino is Professor of Public Policy and Education at the University of California at Riverside. She obtained her PhD in the Economics of Education from Stanford University in 1999 with an emphasis on labor economics, after which she worked as an economist at the Rand Corporation, as an assistant professor at Michigan State University, and as an associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington. Her research focuses on teacher quality, teacher labor markets, school choice, and issues in which health and education are linked. Recent work has included a study of value-added measures of teacher performance, a study of North Carolina teacher labor markets, and a study of the early identification of special needs. She has led several federal, state, and foundation grants, and has taught courses in education policy, the economics of education, policy analysis, quantitative research methods, school choice, and microeconomics.

She joined IZA as a Research Fellow in October 2011.