Leah Brooks
2020-2022

Leah Brooks is Associate Professor in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at the George Washington University and Director of the university’s Center for Washington Area Studies. After receiving her PhD from UCLA in 2005, she taught at the University of Toronto and McGill University, and worked at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Her work to date includes examination of Business Improvement Districts and land assembly to understand the resolution of collective action problems, analysis of the Community Development Block Grant program to understand the political economy of grant giving at the municipal and sub-municipal levels, and an investigation of the long-run impacts of streetcar investments in Los Angeles.Her pending projects include an analysis of whether and why infrastructure costs have increased in the US, and the long-run impacts of Washington, DC’s 1968 civil disturbance. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Urban Economics and the National Tax Journal.