David S. Abrams, PhD, MS is Professor of Law, Business Economics, and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and The Wharton School. He joined the Penn faculty in 2008 after serving as the Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago. He is a Board Member and past-President of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies, and former chair of the Law and Economics section of the American Association of Law Schools.
His research interests include the law and economics of crime, intellectual property, and health economics. Recent research topics include the pandemic impact on crime, use of machine learning to improve fairness in criminal justice, the impact of non-practicing entities on innovation, improving methods for measuring and valuing innovation, effective methods for police reform, and estimating racial disparities in police stops. Dr. Abrams’ work has appeared in a number of top peer-reviewed journals and law reviews including the Stanford Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Journal of Public Economics, and the Journal of Legal Studies. He is the creator of citycrimestats.com. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Master’s in Physics from Stanford.