Erdal Tekin is an economist with primary research interests in the fields of health economics and demographic economics. Within these fields, the main theme of his research is the economic analysis of risky behaviors and the consequences of prenatal and postnatal conditions and risk factors on the short and long-term outcomes of individuals on a multitude of domains including health, human capital, labor market, and crime.

Aside from this main theme, he has also written and published numerous articles studying the impact of child care subsidy and other major welfare programs on parental and child outcomes. His research has been funded by organizations such as the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Family Foundation, and the Danish Council for Independent Research, among others.

He has published in journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Health Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and Journal of Law and Economics. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). In addition, he also serves as an editor for the Journal of Population Economics and an associate editor for the IZA Journal of Labor Policy. Before joining the American University, he was a professor of economics at Georgia State University.