David conducts research in the fields of macroeconomics and development economics, focusing on the determinants of sectoral productivity levels, human capital accumulation, structural transformation, and cross-country differences in labor market outcomes, among other topics. His research has appeared in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and other prominent academic journals. He currently serves as an editor of the Review of Economic Dynamics and a co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics. Since 2016 he has worked as the lead academic for the International Growth Centre in Ghana, helping to foster policy-relevant academic research on economic growth. Lagakos is a research affiliate at the NBER and is a co-organizer of the annual NBER conferences on Economic Growth and Macroeconomics Across Time and Space. Before joining the faculty of Boston University, Lagakos was an associate professor with tenure at the University of California San Diego, and held previous positions at Arizona State University and the Federal Reserve Banks of Minneapolis and New York. He received his PhD in 2008 from UCLA and his BA in 2001 from the University of Rochester.
