David Neumark
  • November 5, 2026

  • Honor recognizes the UC Irvine Distinguished Professor for outstanding scholarly achievement

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David Neumark, Distinguished Professor of economics and co-director of the Center for Population, Inequality and Policy at UC Irvine, has been named a member of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. Established in 2023, the organization promotes scholarship and honors outstanding achievement in the arts, sciences and learned professions. Neumark is among 57 scholars and scientists to be inducted into this year’s cohort of AASL members.

“I’m delighted to be named a member of the Academy. The Academy has recognized economists whose work I greatly admire, who have done important research on economics and public policy, and it’s an honor to be included among them,” he says. 

Neumark is a labor economist who has spent the last four decades studying labor market discrimination, minimum wages, political and urban economics, and public finance. His work has led to new methods for measuring discrimination, critical state-level insights into the effects of minimum wages, the effects of hiring credits on net employment, and the impact of enterprise and opportunity zones on employment, earnings and taxes. He’s the author, co-author or editor of nine books, including Minimum Wages (2008, with William L. Wascher) which was named a 2009 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. He’s published more than 200 articles in top journals including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy and the Journal of Labor Economics, among many others, as well as more than 60 book chapters and special reports for leading journals, think-tanks and policy-focused organizations.

In addition to his academic publications, Neumark actively engages with policymakers and the policy community through briefings, op-eds and legislative testimony. He’s also a frequent voice in public media, weighing in on topics from minimum wage to gendered pay in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Bloomberg, the Financial Times and others. His work has been supported widely by federal agencies and private foundations including the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Alfred P. Sloane Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation and Arnold Ventures, as well as others. He’s currently working on two separately funded studies examining how government regulations influence business startups in California and how artificial intelligence is transforming employment and competition in the technology. In 2019, he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and this year, he was elected a fellow of the Society of Labor Economics.

“David Neumark is able to bring cool-headed analysis backed by careful data to often controversial topics,” says Bill Maurer, UC Irvine social sciences dean. “He is a true exemplar of a scholar who uses his considerable talents to get his findings in front of the policy makers who matter. Whether or not they listen is another story.”

Neumark earned his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard and joined the UC Irvine faculty in 2005 following posts at the Federal Reserve Board, the University of Pennsylvania, Michigan State University, and the Public Policy Institute of California, where he currently serves as an adjunct fellow. In addition to his role at UCI, he is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a research associate at the NBER, IZA and CESifo, and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Neumark is UC Irvine’s second AASL member following the investiture of Shaul Mukamel, Distinguished Professor of chemistry, last year. 

 

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