Finkelstein studied government at Harvard University, where she was a Truman Scholar and received an BA, summa cum laude, in 1995.
At Harvard, her interest in economics was inspired in part by taking economist Lawrence Katz's course "Social Problems in the American Economy".
[8] In 2016, MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences named Finkelstein the John and Jennie S. MacDonald Professor for a five-year term.
[12] Together with Katherine Baicker, she is one of two principal investigators of the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, a randomized evaluation of the impact of expanding Medicaid to low-income adults.
In 1940, her mother immigrated to the United States from Poland, where her maternal grandmother had received a doctorate in comparative literature at the University of Warsaw.