Gabor Debreczeni joins Steer as Chief Economist for North America

Steer is excited to welcome Gabor Debreczeni who is leading the Economics team in North America from our New York office.

Gabor’s professional passion is economic geography; how and why distance, topography, and our built environment impact people's lives and the choices they make. He primarily focuses on the intersection of economics and social equity in infrastructure, particularly regarding inequalities of opportunity.

In an era of significant investments in infrastructure, our clients are making critical policy decisions that will shape our communities for decades. In this context, decision-makers and communities are considering impacts of such projects to mobility, clean energy and access to green space, schools, and drinking water, among other challenges and opportunities unique to each community.

This requires a shift in how we think about traditional transportation problems. Can we put numbers to hard-to-estimate and uncommonly estimated questions, to make decisions more comprehensive, informed and equitable, especially in contexts where incomplete approaches focus less on social effects critical to equity priority communities? Can we make our thinking and answers more probabilistic, to be more honest and comprehensive about uncertainties in the world, and to prepare our clients and communities for multiple scenarios?

Gabor has managed multi-national professional teams and projects for public and private clients. He most recently co-led and significantly grew the Economics team at a large international engineering consulting firm, and beforehand studied and worked in international development. He is passionately multidisciplinary having published research on enrolment in means-based equity programs, tolling equity, induced demand, value of reliability, international trade in Central Asia, travel network mapping, and the equity impacts of scooters. We are thrilled that Gabor is bringing this broad enthusiasm to the work we do with our communities at Steer.