Kim Rueben is the Sol Price fellow and director of the State and Local Finance Initiative at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Rueben is an expert on state and local public finance and the economics of education. Her work examines issues of state and local public finance and focuses on state budget and tax issues, intergovernmental relations, fiscal institutions, and the economics of education, including federal and state financing of both K–12 and postsecondary education and how decisions affect different individuals across states.

In addition to her position at the Urban Institute, Rueben is an adjunct fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), serves on the Washington, DC, Revenue Estimation Advisory Group, and as an advisor to Let’s Get Set, a purpose-driven fintech start-up. She works closely with state officials and has served on state tax advisory boards including in California and Washington, DC, and has testified before congressional and state legislative committees. She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel that examined The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration, was on the executive board of the American Education Finance Association, and was on the board of the National Tax Association.

Before joining Urban, Rueben was a research fellow at the PPIC.

Rueben received a BS in applied math-economics from Brown University, an MS in economics from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.