Danny Yagan

Research Bio

Danny Yagan is an Associate Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Associate Director of the Berkeley Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance, and Faculty Co-Director of the Taxation and Inequality Initiative of the Berkeley Opportunity Lab. From 2021 to 2022 he served as the Chief Economist of the White House Office of Management and Budget. In 2018 he was awarded a Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship for early-career contributions. He joined the department after earning a BA summa cum laude and a PhD in economics from Harvard. 

Research Expertise and Interest

tax policy, income inequality

In the News

Featured in the Media

Please note: The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or positions of UC Berkeley.
February 24, 2020

Fighting Income Segregation in Higher Education

Inside Higher Ed
Scott Jaschik
As long as most colleges employ SAT or ACT test scores as key measures for admission, it will be difficult for them to attract more low-income students, suggests a new working paper co-authored by economics professors Emmanuel Saez and Danny Yagan for the National Bureau of Economic Research. That's because wealthier students tend to perform better on the tests. A solution, they propose, would be to give students from middle- and low-income families a "bonus" of 64 to 160 points on the SAT test. Link to the paper at OpportunityInsights.org.
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February 12, 2020

A Simple Way to Equalize the Ivies? Give Others the Legacy SAT Bonus

New York Times
Dana Goldstein and Anemona Hartocollis
Simply giving middle-class and low-income students an SAT "bonus" of 64 to 160 points -- essentially equaling the advantage seen in legacy admissions at selective colleges -- would significantly reduce socio-economic segregation in higher education, concludes a new study, co-authored by economics professors Emmanuel Saez and Danny Yagan. The study found, among other things, that three-quarters of affluent students with a 1080 SAT score attended one of the 976 selective colleges studied, compared to half of the students from the lowest income bracket with the same score.
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Teaching

Courses taught during the three most recent terms
2026 Spring

  • Public Economics  [ECON 131]  

  • Supervised Independent Study and Research  [ECON 299]  

  • Individual Study for Doctoral Students  [ECON 602]  

  • Senior Honors Thesis  [ECON H195B]  

2025 Fall

  • Supervised Independent Study and Research  [ECON 199]  

  • Public Economics  [ECON 230A]  

  • Seminar in Public Sector Economics  [ECON 231]  

  • Supervised Independent Study and Research  [ECON 299]  

  • Individual Study for Doctoral Students  [ECON 602]  

  • Senior Honors Thesis  [ECON H195B]  

2025 Spring

  • Supervised Independent Study and Research  [ECON 299]  

  • Individual Study for Doctoral Students  [ECON 602]  

  • Senior Honors Thesis  [ECON H195B]