Megan T. Stevenson

Megan Stevenson is an economist and criminal justice scholar. She conducts empirical research in areas such as bail, algorithmic risk assessment, misdemeanors, sentencing and juvenile justice.

She was the inaugural winner of the Ephraim Prize given to an “early-career scholar in the field of law and economics whose work has advanced the state of knowledge in the field.” Stevenson was also the 2019 winner of the Oliver E. Williamson Prize for Best Article in the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization. 

She publishes widely in law reviews such as the Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and the University of Virginia Law Review, as well as economics journals such as the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.  Her research on bail was cited extensively in a landmark federal civil rights decision, O’Donnell v. Harris County, and has received widespread media coverage.

Her research has been profiled in the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Wired Magazine, The Atlantic, Science Magazine, Time Magazine, Newsweek, the Houston Chronicle and many others. She is on the Board of Directors of the American Law and Economics Association and is the chair of the Law and Economics section at AALS. Prior to joining the law faculty at UVA, Stevenson was an assistant professor of law at George Mason University and a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Quattrone Center. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.