Research interests: public finance, tax competition, fiscal federalism, mobility, sales and excise taxes

David R. Agrawal, economics professor, studies local government policy making and tax competition. His work explores how businesses, people and economic activity relocate in response to taxes levied by cities, states and countries. Through targeted research, he investigates tax revenue consequences of interstate and interjurisdictional mobility.

He’s the co-editor of Policy Responses to Tax Competition (University of Chicago Press), which was supported by Arnold Ventures, and he’s currently editor-in-chief of the journal International Tax and Public Finance. He’s also on the board of editors for the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy; on the editorial advisory board of National Tax Journal, and an associate editor for Regional Science and Urban Economics. His work has been published in leading journals including the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, the Economic Journal, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Journal of Urban Economics, to name a few.

Agrawal earned his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan where he specialized in tax policy. Prior to his UCI appointment, he held professorial posts at the University of Georgia and University of Kentucky. He’s excited to join UCI’s highly ranked Department of Economics which has strengths in his key fields - public and urban economics. He’s looking forward to joining an excellent set of colleagues and graduate students and teaching UCI’s outstanding undergraduates.