Elena Patel is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Her research examines how tax systems, health programs, social programs, and governance structures shape economic behavior and well-being. She has studied the design of optimal tax systems and their effects on investment and capital accumulation, how workers respond to changing incentives and risks, how leadership and governance affect firms, and how health policies spill over into labor markets. Before joining Brookings, she was an assistant professor at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, a senior public finance economist at the Council of Economic Advisers, and also held positions at the U.S. Treasury Department, the Postal Regulatory Commission, the Congressional Budget Office, and the U.S. Department of Justice. She earned her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.