Andres Ramasco

Andres Ramasco

PhD Candidate in Economics — 2026/2027 Job Market Candidate

University of Notre Dame

I am a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Notre Dame. As an applied microeconomist, my research focuses on health economics at its intersection with public economics, with a special emphasis on studying preventable causes of death and the policies and market dynamics that shape them.

I am on the 2026/2027 job market.

I am a Graduate Student Affiliate at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and a Junior Researcher at the National Network of Researchers in Economics of Argentina.

You can find my CV here (also available in Spanish).

Interests

  • Health Economics
  • Public Economics
  • Impact Evaluation

Job Market Paper

Sinaloa Cartel Presence and Its Impact on Fentanyl Mortality in the United States

Abstract: More than one million Americans have died of drug overdoses since 1999, most of them from opioids. The deadliest phase of this epidemic was driven by fentanyl, a cheap and extremely potent synthetic opioid: annual fentanyl deaths rose from about 3,000 in 2013 to over 70,000 in 2022 and now make up most U.S. overdose deaths, yet the drivers of this wave remain understudied. Most illicit fentanyl entered through the southern border, trafficked by Mexican drug trafficking organizations, and the Sinaloa Cartel was uniquely positioned to produce and distribute it at scale with infrastructure built for heroin and methamphetamine. I show that Sinaloa’s early advantage shaped the impact of the fentanyl crisis. Using DEA intelligence on cartel presence, I compare U.S. counties dominated by Sinaloa with counties dominated by rival cartels in a difference-in-differences design. After 2014, fentanyl mortality in Sinaloa-dominated counties rose by 5.5 deaths per 100,000 relative to rival-dominated counties, a substantial share of it through deaths combining fentanyl with heroin and stimulants. The burden falls mostly on residents without a college degree. Mortality rises across all racial and ethnic groups, with the most pronounced effects among Hispanic residents, unlike the first two opioid waves, which mostly affected non-Hispanic White populations. Violent and property crime do not change, consistent with the cartel using its existing distribution networks to gradually replace heroin with fentanyl, without the turf wars that accompanied earlier drug-market transitions.

Download the latest draft (PDF)

Publications

December 2025 Health Economics

Not a Sip: Effects of Zero Tolerance Laws on Road Traffic Fatalities

I analyze the effect of a Zero Tolerance law on traffic-related mortality, finding no detectable decreases.
PDF DOI Media Coverage

Working Papers

January 2025

Effects of expanded Medicaid access to Ozempic

Teaching

Average instructor rating: 4.7/5 · Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher Award (2026)

ECON 30335: Introduction to Linear Regression

Instructor of record: Fall 2025 · Student rating 4.7/5

ECON 32340: Stats for Economics (tutorial sections)

Teaching assistant: Spring 2024, Spring 2026 · Student ratings 4.1–5.0/5

RE 20700: Real Estate Fundamentals

Teaching assistant: Spring 2023

ECON 10010: Principles of Microeconomics

Teaching assistant: Fall 2022

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