Professor Auerbach's research and teaching focus on local governance, urban politics, and the political economy of development, with a regional focus on South Asia and India in particular. His first book, Demanding Development: The Politics of Public Goods Provision in India's Urban Slums (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics Series), accounts for the uneven success of India's slum residents in demanding and securing essential public services from the state. The project draws on more than two years of fieldwork in the north Indian cities of Jaipur, Rajasthan and Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Demanding Development won the 2021 Dennis Judd Best Book Award from the Urban and Local Politics Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). The doctoral dissertation on which Demanding Development is based also won three awards, including APSA's Gabriel A. Almond Award for best dissertation in comparative politics. Auerbach's forthcoming book (co-authored with Tariq Thachil), Migrants and Machine Politics: How India's Urban Poor Seek Representation and Responsiveness, will be published by Princeton University Press in January 2023, in the Princeton Studies in Political Behavior Series.

Auerbach's research on urban politics and development in India also appears in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Contemporary South Asia, Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, World Development, and World Politics.