Min Ye Paing Hein, a native of Taunggyi, Shan state, Myanmar, completed his undergraduate degree at Cornell University. He is currently completing his Ph.D in Sociology with a minor in Economics. He has also completed his course work for his second doctoral degree in development economics at the same university. As a doctoral student, he teaches undergraduate courses on economics, statistics and sociology at the University of Wisconsin. His primary research interests include development economics (resource revenue management, fiscal federalism and tax reform), applied econometrics (impact analysis and program evaluation), civil war and state formation, and warlordism.
He was a graduate research fellow at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2008 to 2010. He also has worked as a consultant for DAI, an international development contracting agency based in greater Washington, D.C. area, and Proximity Design, a social enterprise based in Yangon, Myanmar. He is fluent in Burmese, English, and Mandarin Chinese and has a working knowledge of Spanish, French and Thai.