Prof David A. Jaeger
Professor of Economics and Public Policy
Biography
David Jaeger received his BA in Economics at Williams College (1986), MAs in Economics (1990) and Statistics (1993) from the University of Michigan, and his PhD in Economics at the University of Michigan (1995). He has held regular faculty positions at Hunter College (CUNY), the College of William and Mary, the University of Cologne, and the CUNY Graduate Center. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton University and the University of Bonn, among others. David joined the School of Economics and Finance at St Andrews in January 2020.
David is currently Editor of the Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Associate Editor of the Journal of Wine Economics, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), the Institute for Labor Economics (IZA), the Centre for Economic Studies (CESifo), and the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM). Before coming to St Andrews he was a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
In 2025-26, David is President-Elect of the European Society for Population Economics. He was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Economic Society in 2025 and currently serves on the RES Council and Trustee Board.
At St Andrews, David is the Director of the Master of Public Policy programme and a convener of the Applied Microeconomics Cluster. He is also an affiliate of the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTV) and the Centre Higher Education Research (CHER).
David's Bluesky handle is @davidajaeger.bsky.social.
Teaching
EC4424 - Economics of Migration
EC4425 - Econometrics of Impact Evaluation
EC4434 - Personnel Economics
EC5612 - Causal Inference
Research areas
David’s research interests are in applied microeconomics, particularly labour economics, health economics, policy analysis, and applied econometrics. He has also worked on terrorism and conflict. His work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statististics, the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Journal of the American Statistical Association, among others.
For a complete list of publications, see David's curriculum vita and Google Scholar page.
PhD supervision
- Francesca Chiaradia
- Qunli Hu
- Jakub Kowalczyk
- Kairat Umargaliyev
- Pengkheang Yoeun
Selected publications
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The demand for interns
Jaeger, D. A., Nunley, J., Seals, A. & Wilbrandt, E., 10 Feb 2020, Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, (Working Papers; no. 26729).Research output: Working paper
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Shift-share instruments and the impact of immigration
Jaeger, D. A., Ruist, J. & Stuhler, J., Feb 2018, Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 55 p. (Working Paper; no. 24285).Research output: Working paper
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Direct Evidence on Risk Attitudes and Migration
Jaeger, D. A., Dohmen, T., Falk, A., Huffman, D., Sunde, U. & Bonin, H., Aug 2010, In: Review of Economics and Statistics. 92, 3, p. 684-689 7 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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The Cycle of Violence? An Empirical Analysis of Fatalities in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
Jaeger, D. A. & Paserman, M. D., Sept 2008, In: American Economic Review. 98, 4, p. 1591-1604 14 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Problems with instrumental variables estimation when the correlation between the instruments and the endogeneous explanatory variable is weak
Bound, J., Jaeger, D. A. & Baker, R., 1 Jun 1995, In: Journal of the American Statistical Association. 90, 430, p. 443-450 8 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review