Position Title
Professor of Law
Shayak Sarkar's scholarship concerns how financial and tax laws address immigration. He obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.
Before entering law teaching, Professor Sarkar represented domestic workers at Greater Boston Legal Services and clerked for the Hon. Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he received the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and was active in both the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project and the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic. Before law school, he studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, where he earned masters degrees, with distinction, in social work and development economics.
His academic research has been published in both law and peer-reviewed journals, including the California Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, and the Review of Economics and Statistics.
His perspectives have also been published in popular outlets, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Newsweek.
- Ph.D. Economics, Harvard University, 2018
- J.D. Yale Law School, 2013
- M.S. Economics for Development, Oxford University, 2009, Rhodes Scholar
- M.S. Evidence-based Social Intervention, Oxford University, 2008
- A.M. Statistics, Harvard University, 2007
- A.B. Applied Mathematics, magna cum laude, Harvard University, 2007, Phi Beta Kappa
- Sharswood Fellow, University of Pennsylvania Law School, 2016-2017
- Law Clerk to Hon. Guido Calabresi, U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 2015-2016
- Attorney (Yale-Gruber Fellow for Women’s Rights), Greater Boston Legal Services, 2014-2015
- Employment Discrimination Law
- Financial Regulation
- Immigration Law And Policy
- Law And Economics
- Tax Law
Publications
Financial Assimilation, 114 California Law Review (Forthcoming 2026).
Taxing Nannies (w/ Ariel Jurow Kleiman & Emily Satterthwaite), 110 Iowa Law Review 111 (2024).
Internal Revenue’s External Borders, 112 California Law Review 1645 (2024).
Capital Migration, 57 U.C. Davis Law Review 2027 (2024).
Need-Based Employment, 64 Boston College Law Review 119 (2023).
Capital Controls as Migrant Controls, 109 California Law Review 799 (2021).
Tax Law’s Migration, 62 Boston College Law Review 1 (2021).
The New Legal World of Domestic Work, 32 Yale Journal of Law & Feminism 1 (2020).
Consumer Expectations and Consumer Protection, 88 George Washington Law Review 949 (2020).
Financial Immigration Federalism, 107 Georgetown Law Journal 1561 (2019).
Crediting Migrants, 71 Stanford Law Review Online 281 (2019).
PHH Corporation v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Financial Fairness and Administrative Anxiety (w/ Josh Rosenthal), 166 University of Pennsylvania Law Review Online 265 (2018).
Exclusionary Taxation (w/ Josh Rosenthal), 53 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review (2018).
Understanding the Advice of Commissions-Motivated Agents: Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market (with Santosh Anagol & Shawn Cole), 99 Review Of Economics & Statistics 1 (2017).
Intimate Employment, 39 Harvard Journal Of Law & Gender 429 (2016).
Do Group Dynamics Influence Social Capital Gains Among Microfinance Clients? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Urban India (with Ben Feigenberg, Erica Field, Rohini Pande & Natalia Rigol), 33 Journal Of Policy Analysis & Management 932 (2014).
Comparative Regulation of Market Intermediaries (with Santosh Anagol & Shawn Cole) in Modernizing Insurance Regulation (eds. Viral Acharya & Matthew Richardson, Wiley Finance) (2014).
Comment, Repayment Frequency in the Law of Microfinance, 31 Yale Journal On Regulation 259 (2014).