Crystal S. Yang

Crystal S. Yang is the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where she is co-director of the Crime Working Group.  She is also a Co-Editor at the Journal of Public Economics and serves on the editorial board at the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. Professor Yang’s teaching and research interests center around empirical law and economics, particularly in the areas of criminal justice and algorithmic fairness. Her current research includes empirical projects on racial bias in the criminal justice system, human oversight of algorithms, the spillover effects of deportation fear, and delivery of health care in correctional facilities. In addition to publications in leading economics journals and law reviews, her work has been featured in the New Yorker, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Boston Globe, among other media outlets, and has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court. She is a recipient of the American Law Institute’s Early Career Scholars Medal and Harvard Law School’s Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence. 

From 2014-2015, Professor Yang served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. Professor Yang graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2013, where she was a John M. Olin and Terence M. Considine Fellow, and recipient of the John M. Olin Prize. She also received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 2013 and was a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She earned an A.B. in economics summa cum laude and an A.M. in statistics from Harvard University in 2008.