Rachel Ngai is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and a member of Centre for Macroeconomics (CfM).

She is also a Theme Leader for Structural Transformation and Economic Growth (STEG). She holds a B.Sc. in Economics from HKUST and a Ph.D. in Economics from University of Pennsylvania.

Her research interests span the theory of economic growth, labour markets and housing markets, with focus on the structural transformation, time allocation across skills, gender and across countries, fluctuations in the housing market in the presence of search frictions and more recently on Hukou system and labour misallocation in China.

Rachel Ngai joined IZA as a Research Fellow in April 2023.