Smit Vasquez Caballero

Smit Vasquez Caballero is a research economist in RTI’s Center for Applied Economics and Strategy. He has over a decade of experience in natural resource management and food, agriculture, and fisheries economics. Dr. Vasquez Caballero uses econometric techniques to model consumer behavior, employs population dynamics and fishing behavioral models to assess the impacts of changes in fishing regulations, and develops socioecological vulnerability assessments for marine environments, focusing on climate adaptation. He has been a project lead and director for projects administered by national and international governmental agencies, including an impact evaluation of coral larva settlement and reseeding supported by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), updating model elasticities in the U.S. Department of Agriculture Trade Impacts Model, and building economic operating models in support of the Gulf of Maine American Lobster Fishery for the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service. 

Before joining RTI in 2022, Dr. Vasquez Caballero was an economist contractor with NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center and postdoctoral fellow with Future Oceans Lab at the University of Vigo in Vigo, Spain. He is bilingual in English and Spanish.