Michael LaForest is a Research Director for Crime Lab New York.  His research focuses on crime and education public economics topics, including the effects of career & technical high school education, the evaluation of policies to improve community college graduation rates, and the effects of mandatory minimum sentence laws.  His research uses both structural and non-structural estimation techniques.

Michael holds a PhD in economics from the University of Virginia and a BS in economics & political science from the University of Michigan.

Prior to attending graduate school, he worked as a strategy consultant at IBM.