Levon Barseghyan is an economist whose research spans multiple fields and integrates diverse approaches within economics. Barseghyan’s work, both theoretical and empirical, is aimed at uncovering mechanisms that shape economic behavior and how such behavior is affected by market structure, economic policies and political institutions. 

Barseghyan has done pioneering work to develop methods to study the nature of risk preferences and their contextual stability, combining insights from behavioral economics and theory with state-of-the-art econometric techniques. His work offers innovative ways to conduct inference that are valid in a variety of settings beyond risk. The importance of this research agenda has been evidenced by publications in top economic journals and National Science Foundation awards.   

Barseghyan has worked on the effects of institutions and policies on economic outcomes, particularly at the intersection of growth, public finance, and political economy. This research employs carefully constructed theoretical models to shed light on the consequences of institutions or specific policies on economic and societal outcomes. Examples include slowdowns caused by lax banking regulations, theoretical and empirical analysis of barriers to entry, the link between public debt and growth, and more recently, the role of local public finances in shaping community development.