Liya Palagashvili

Liya Palagashvili is a senior research fellow and director of the Labor Policy Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where her research focuses on labor markets, independent work, portable benefits, and the role of artificial intelligence in the changing nature of work. This research has been cited in congressional hearings and the Federal Register, and has served as the basis of federal and state legislation on independent workers and portable benefits.

She has testified before several state legislatures and committees of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. Her writing has appeared in outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Fortune, and Forbes; her research has been featured in the Washington Post, Bloomberg, USA Today, NPR, Axios, and Politico, among others. She writes Labor Market Matters on Substack and contributes columns to The Hill. Palagashvili has also published in academic journals and in books on political economy, public policy, and economics.

Palagashvili previously served on the Data Users Advisory Committee for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and was a scholar at New York University School of Law. She was named to Forbes '30 Under 30' in Law & Policy. Before joining Mercatus, she was a professor of economics at SUNY Purchase and a visiting scholar at King's College London. She earned her PhD in economics from George Mason University.