Lesley Chiou

Lesley Chiou is an assistant professor of economics at Occidental College. She did her graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her undergraduate studies at the University of California Berkeley. Her fields of interest are Industrial Organization and Applied Econometrics. Her research focuses on competition in the retail sector and the application of simulation methods in estimation.  

Chiou is a member of the American Economics Association and The Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP).

On May 29, 2006, Chiou visited Professor Santhi Hejeebu's Microeconomics course to explain her research and methodology. She asked, “How do consumers choose among retail stores that compete on a variety of dimensions such as product assortment, price, and location?” She found that the average consumer still prefers to shop at Wal-Mart over most over retailers even when facing the same set of prices and location.