My name is Sun Kyoung Lee, and I usually go by “Sun (\ˈsən).” I am a Research Assistant Professor (tenure-track) at the University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, Survey Research Center, and the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics (CID). Prior to joining Michigan, I was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Yale Economic Growth Center from 2019 to 2022. I received my Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University in 2019.
My research lies at the intersection of economic history, spatial economics, and the development of new data infrastructure for historical research. I study the long-run dynamics of American economic development, with a focus on how people, ideas, and economic activity move across space and time. My recent and ongoing work examines the spatial dynamics of migration and mobility, the contribution of immigration to American innovation and productivity growth, the role of urban planning and transit infrastructure in shaping inequality and racial segregation in prewar American cities, the role of bankruptcy and other legal institutions in mediating regional adjustment to economic shocks, and the patterns of breakthrough innovation that drive long-run economic growth.
My work draws on a wide range of quantitative and computational methods, including the digitization of large historical data, machine learning–based record linkage, geographic information systems (GIS), spatial econometric methods, and quantitative spatial modeling. I have applied these methods across more than 150 years of U.S. economic history, drawing on newly digitized real-estate transaction records, U.S. patent data, US federal population censuses (including restricted-access census records), and a range of period archival sources. Beyond this historical work, I also apply data science methods to contemporary policy problems, including ongoing collaborations on energy inequality in rural communities and on housing factors in community-level firearm violence. This research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of the Treasury (via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), and other agencies.