Leah Boustan

Leah Boustan joins the FAS as Professor of Economics. She is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where she is co-director of the Development of the American Economy Program.

Boustan’s research lies at the intersection between economic history and labor economics. She has published work on the Great Black Migration from the rural south during and after World War II and the mass migration from Europe to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her first book, Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets (Princeton University Press, 2016) won the Allan Sharlin Memorial Book Award from the Social Science History Association and the Alice Hanson Jones Award from the Economic History Association. Her second book, Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success (co-authored with Ran Abramitzky; PublicAffairs, 2022), was listed on The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022, Forbes’ Best Business Books of 2022, and Behavioral Scientist’s Notable Books of 2022.