Victor Kilanko

Law & Policy Fellow

Victor Kilanko, PhD is an Economist and Causal Inference Scientist whose work centers on a single question: how vested interests capture institutions meant to serve the public and what that capture costs in lives, dollars, and human potential. Using rigorous empirical methods, he applies modern causal inference to isolate cause and effect across sectors. His research spans issues such as whether private prison capacity drives incarceration beyond crime rates, and whether Medicaid expansion reshaped the charitable mission of nonprofit hospitals. While the settings vary, the underlying mechanism remains constant: concentrated interests distorting public institutions. To make these dynamics accessible beyond academia, Victor developed catviz, a causal inference visualization framework and open-source R package on CRAN that translates complex methods into tools for policy insight. He holds a PhD in Economics from Claremont Graduate University.