Jason Cook is an economist who specializes in combining restricted-access administrative records with quasi-experiments to explore topics at the intersection of labor and public economics with applications in the economics of education.

He has a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University. His current work focuses on the US safety net. Specifically on the barriers to accessing the safety net as well as the impacts of the safety net on labor supply.

His previous work focuses on estimating how student outcomes were impacted by the school segregation resulting from terminating race-blind admissions lotteries. Jason also has several papers exploring the impacts and determinants of charter school competition. He also studies the effect of charter schools on traditional school resource allocation. Current work examines how charter competition impacts voting behavior and whether district expenditures can shield against future charter transfers. In a separate strand of work, he is studying the impact of SNAP eligibility requirements on labor supply and the prevalence of income misreporting using statewide administrative SNAP records combined with restricted-access Census products.

Jason Cook joined IZA as Research Affiliate in October 2018 and became a Research Fellow in December 2023.