Amanda Agan

J-PAL Affiliated Professor

Associate Professor

Cornell University

Amanda Agan is an associate professor of economics at Cornell University. Her research lies at the intersections of economics, law, and public policy with a focus on the economics of crime and labor market discrimination. Her work studies the consequences and determinants of criminal legal involvement and how various policies can change the incentives of defendants, criminal justice actors, and people with records with a particular emphasis on how criminal involvement impacts labor market opportunities (and vice versa). She also studies sources of and policies to constrain the impacts of discrimination in the labor market and other spheres.  

Amanda is an NBER Faculty Research Fellow. Prior to joining the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, she served as associate professor of economics at Rutgers University and was previously a post-doctoral research associate in the Economics Department and the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University. She received her PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 2013 and holds a BA in Economics from George Mason University.