Rachel Ngai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a member of Centre for Macroeconomics (CfM). She is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and senior visiting fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study HKUST. She received a B.Sc. in Economics from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 1996 and a Ph.D. in Economics from University of Pennsylvania in 2001. 

Her research interests span the theory of economic growth, labour markets and housing markets, with focus on the process of structural transformation and mobility barriers such as China's Hukou system, time allocation across gender and across countries, and search frictions in the housing market. She has published papers in American Economic Review, American Economic Journal -- Macroeconomics, International Economic Review, Journal of European Economic Association, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Economic Growth and Review of Economic Dynamics.