Dahl's research interests are in labor economics and applied microeconomics, including a wide set of issues that range from how income affects child achievement, to peer effects among coworkers and family members, to the impact of incarceration on recidivism and employment, to intergenerational links in welfare use. His articles have appeared in the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.