Alex Bell

Alex Bell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University. His research focuses on labor market inequalities and their societal implications, utilizing large-scale administrative datasets to explore topics such as income inequality, job choice dynamics, and geographic amenities.

Dr. Bell’s work intersects inequality of opportunity with innovation, examining socioeconomic barriers to innovation through U.S. tax records and patent data. He has contributed to understanding how policies like unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic affected worker behavior and has developed methodological frameworks for analyzing job choice in income inequality studies.

His research has been published in leading economics journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and American Economic Review, and has been highlighted in media outlets such as The New York Times, Vox, and The Economist. Government reports by the GAO and USPTO have also cited his work.

Dr. Bell has received funding from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, Kauffman Foundation, and Arnold Foundation. Prior to joining Georgia State University, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA and earned his PhD in Economics from Harvard University.