David Kaplan is a Senior Labor Market Specialist in the Labor Markets and Social Security Unit of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Prior to joining the IDB in 2010, he worked as a Research Economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, and as a Private Sector Development Specialist at the World Bank. He is an expert in labor markets in developing countries, particularly in the areas of labor regulations and social insurance. He has published research articles in journals such as the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. He received a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University in 1998.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in April 2012.