Bloomberg View | Cass R. Sunstein column urges progressives and conservatives to escape their respective echo chambers by reading the best of each otther's work. Here he recommends five for conservatives, including Scarcity: Why Having Less Means So Much, by Sendhil Mullainathan (Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics) and Eldar Shafir (Princeton University).

"Mullainathan and Shafir demonstrate that these diverse forms of scarcity have something important in common: They take over our minds, leaving us with limited “bandwidth.”...Mullainathan and Shafir show why many public policy initiatives, which impose “bandwidth taxes” (for example, by making people fill out complex forms to receive financial assistance), turn out to be unhelpful and even counterproductive."... Read more about Five Books to Change Conservatives' Minds

FiveThirtyEight | Four reasons why HUD and housing policy matter—for poverty, homeownership and affordability, and in fighting discrimination and segregation. Cites research by Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard, and notes that Desmond's work was instrumental in getting eviction-related questions added to the 2017 American Housing Survey. 

Harvard Gazette | Bruce Western, Professor of Sociology and Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice Policy, Vincent Schiraldi, Senior Research Fellow with the Malcolm Wiener Center's Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, and Judge Nancy Gertner, Senior Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, relate their experience with criminal justice policy in a seminar aimed at reducing the country's bloated prison population. 

The Atlantic—CityLab | Draws from work by economists Ray Fisman, Boston University, and Michael Luca, Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School. Their article, "Fixing Discrimination in Online Marketplaces," featured in last month's roundup, appears in the Harvard Business Review.

The JFK Jr Forum  | Vivek H. Murthy, United States Surgeon General, joined Amitabh Chandra, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy, at the JFK Jr. Forum for a conversation on America's healthcare issues relating to opioid addiction, gun violence, and changes to healthcare laws under the new administration. Co-sponsored by the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy.
Watch video ▶

Claremont Review of Books | Review of George J. Borjas's We Wanted Workers, by Christopher Caldwell. Borjas is the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

The American Prospect | Two new books explore how difficult the housing market and criminal justice system make it to climb out of poverty. Adam D. Reich of Columbia University reviews Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciencest at Harvard, and A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as Punishment for the Poor, by Alexis Harris, University of Washington.

Vox | Quotes Edward Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics: "This is unlikely to do much for road and bridge maintenance...And [economists] have long believed that the highest returns are for fixing existing infrastructure.”

“If [we] only built projects that could cover their costs with user charges, we would have far fewer white elephant projects,” says Harvard’s Glaeser. “However, we would also miss good projects as well. In particular, we would miss projects that mainly serve the less advantaged. Asking buses to pay for themselves would be a mistake.”

The New York Times Book Review | Review of Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets, by Leah Platt Boustan (Ph.D. '06), Professor of Economics at UCLA, and Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform, by Tommie Shelby, Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard.

The New Yorker | Cites research by psychologists Michael Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, which found that people "routinely underestimated existing wealth inequality."  Also quotes economist Justin Wolfers (Ph.D. '01), Professor of Economics and Public Policy, University of Michigan.
View Norton and Ariely study

Harvard Gazette | Coverage of the the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies’ annual Summit on the Future of Europe. 

"Peter A. Hall, Harvard’s Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies, warned that in addition to its debt, banking, and growth crises, Europe faces a political one, with declining levels of trust in government and a shift away from mainstream politics. Hall argued that EU leaders worsened or caused the problem by seeking a “fuller fiscal or political union” in response to the Eurozone crisis, an approach that he said deprives national electorates of the sense that their governments are accountable."
View the conference agenda... Read more about 'Desperate but not hopeless times'

Chicago Tribune | Column cites research by Andrew Garin, Ph.D. candidate in Political Economy and Government, who examined the impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 on local employment growth. Using geographically-detailed data on highway construction, Garin found no effect on employment in the local of the construction site, showing that this was because the majority of contractors, selected by competitive bidding, commute from other local labor markets.
View the research

The New York Times | Eduardo Porter column quotes Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy: “What happens when Trump realizes he cannot adequately respond to the expectations he has raised?” he asked. “Does he respond to economic failure like all populists around the world do — by further polarizing the nation and deepening divisions based on identity? And what does that do the quality of our democracy?”... Read more about Trump Campaign's Easy Answers Confront Hard Reality

International Business Times |  Alex Keyssar, Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy, interviewed.

Bloomberg News | Discusses new paper, forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, by Edward Glaeser, Wei Huang (Ph.D. '16), Yueran Ma, and Andrei Shleifer. Wei Huang is currently a Post-doctoral Fellow with the National Bureau of Economic Research.
View the research

Freakonomics Radio | Societies where people trust one another are healthier and wealthier. In the U.S. (and the U.K. and elsewhere), social trust has been falling for decades. Features Robert Putnam, Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, and Edward Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics [audio + transcript].

Harvard Business Review | Essay by legal scholar Joan C. Williams draws from Michèle Lamont's book, The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. Lamont is Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard.... Read more about What was the white working class thinking?

The New York Times | Cites Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology.

The Boston Globe | Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology, offers perspective.

The Atlantic—CityLab | Explores research by Jeremy Levine (Ph.D. '16), now Assistant Professor of Organizational Studies, University of Michigan. View the research, forthcoming in the American Sociological Review... Read more about When Nonprofits Are the New City Leaders

The Booklist Reader | One in a series of interviews with each of the finalists for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

The New York Times Book Review
Poets, musicians, diplomats, filmmakers, novelists, actors, and artists share the books that accompanied them through 2016. "There was a lot of great nonfiction in 2016," writes novelist Ann Patchett, "but there are four books that I recommend with a sense of urgency"—among them, Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences.

Former U.S. Representative Barney Frank notes two pieces of conventional wisdom—one domestic; the other international—that have structured our national debates for deades. Subjecting the received wisdom to close examintion: The Globalization Paradox, by Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School, 

The New Yorker | Among them, Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences.

PEN America | Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, is one of 10 books on the 2017 PEN America longlist in nonfiction for the John Kenneth Galbraith award. Finalists for this biennial award will be announced on January 18, 2017. The winner will be announced on February 22, 2017 and honored at the 2017 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony on March 27, 2017. Desmond is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Science at Harvard.

Bloomberg | Angus Deaton, awarded the 2015 Nobel prize in Economics, recommends Matthew Desmond's Evicted, together with $2.00 a Day, by Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer. 

Boston Globe | Matthew Desmond's Evicted is selected as one of the year's best in nonfiction. Desmond is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

The New York Times Book Review | Matthew Desmond's Evicted is among this year's 10 Best Books, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. Desmond is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

AAPSS | Lawrence D. Bobo, the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences, is one of five newly-elected Fellows to join the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2017. The AAPSS, one of the nation's oldest learned societies, recognized Bobo's research contributions as having "quantified, qualified, and illuminated understandings about social inequality, politics, racism and attitudes about race in America."

The 2017 Fellows also include Martha Minow (Dean of Harvard Law School), Margaret Levi (Stanford University), Timothy Smeeding (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Claude Steele (University of California-Berkeley).

The Week (UK) | Matthew Desmond's Evicted is one of 21 recommended books for 2016. Desmond in the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

Washington Post | Matthew Desmond's Evicted is selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2016: "In spare and beautiful prose, Desmond chronicles the economic and psychological devastation of substandard housing in America and the cascading misfortunes that come with losing one’s home...In this extraordinary feat of reporting and ethnography, Desmond has made it impossible ever again to consider poverty in the United States without tackling the central role of housing."

Desmond is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

Harvard Gazette | Renowned political philosopher Danielle Allen, director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, professor of government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and professor of education at the Graduate School of Education, has been named a University Professor, Harvard’s highest faculty honor.

Awardee | Maya Sen, Assistant Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and co-authors Avidit Acharya (Stanford) and Matthew Blackwell (Harvard Government Department), have been awarded the Joseph Bernd Award for the best article published in Journal of Politics in 2016. Their article, "The Political Legacy of American Slavery," is available open access.
View article (PDF)

Matthew Desmond's Evicted is one of six books (3 fiction, 3 nonfiction) named to the Shortlist for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. The citation reads, "This is essential reading for anyone interested in social justice, poverty, and feminist issues, but its narrative nonfiction style will also draw general readers—and will hopefully spark national discussion."  The two medal winners will be announced January 22, 2017. Desmond is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard.

... Read more about Simon Jäger: Upjohn Institute 2016 Dissertation Award

The Boston Globe | Leah Wright Rigueur's book, The Loneliness of the Black Republican (Princeton University Press, 2014), will be honored by the New England Historical Association at its annual conference on October 22. Rigueur, an Assistant Professor af the Harvard Kennedy School, will receive the James P. Hanlan book award, which recognizes the work of an historian, focusing on any area of historical scholarship, who lives and works in New England.

Awardees | Harvard's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning announced the recipients of its Certificates of Distinction in teaching for spring 2016, which included Inequality & Social Policy doctoral fellows Aaron Benavidez (Sociology), Jack Cao (Psychology), Oren Danieli (Business Economics), Kelley Fong (Sociology & Social Policy), Margot Moinester (Sociology), and Alix Winter (Sociology & Social Policy). The recipients will be honored at a reception on Wed, Oct 19th from 4-5:30 pm in CGIS-South.

Washington Post | Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City has been selected as one of  six finalists in non-fiction for this year's Kirkus Prizes. Of the 18 finalists in all, three winners will be announced at a special ceremony in Austin on November 3. Desmond, a sociologist, is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

... Read more about James Feigenbaum: Economic History Association 2016 Allan Nevins Dissertation Prize

Awardee | Jessica Simes (Ph.D. in Sociology '16), now an assistant professor at Boston University, has been awarded the first of two newly-endowed University Provost Career Development Professorships at that institution.  The three-year University Provost’s Career Development Professorships will support two junior faculty working in academic areas with “the greatest potential for impacting the quality and stature of the University, as determined by the provost." Simes, whose Harvard doctoral dissertation focused on racial inequality and the mass incarceration of African Americans, was recognized for her work in data science—"specifically the mapping of communities to reflect the percentage of incarcerated people—[which] has been the backbone of Simes’s research on race, poverty, and mass incarceration." Learn more about her research at her homepage.

CIFAR | Natalie Bau (Ph.D. in Public Policy, '15) is one of 18 exceptional early-career researchers from diverse science and social science fields selected to the inaugural cohort of the new CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars Program, sponsored by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars receive two-year appointments with one of 14 research programs—in Bau's case, Institutions, Organizations, and Growth.

An Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto, Bau studies development and education economics, with an emphasis on the industrial organization of education markets. 

Natalie Bau homepage

Politico | Politco surveys a range of experts—among them, historian Leah Wright Rigueur, Assistant Professor at Harvard Kennedy School. Says Rigueur: We need to take Trump's tweets more seriously.

The New York Times | By Sendhil Mullainathan, Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics. How to find common ground in tackling problems of inequality and mobility from poverty? Focus on creating more tailwinds, writes Mullainathan.

Jamaica Plain Gazette (and others) | By Mayor Martin Walsh and Ron Ferguson, Faculty Director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University.

As the science tells us, 80 percent of a child’s brain growth happens during the first three years of life. Racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic skill gaps can become apparent by the age of two. How we engage our babies and toddlers in those first years are critical. We must foster stimulating learning environments across all households and neighborhoods in our city.

"That purpose is what brought organizations like the Black Philanthropy Fund, Boston Children’s Museum, the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, Boston Medical Center, WGBH, and the City of Boston together to launch the Boston Basics campaign.

Brookings Institution | By Shaun M. Dougherty, Joshua S. Goodman, Darryl V. Hill, Erica Litke, and Lindsay C. Page. Joshua Goodman is Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Gov Innovator Podcast | Andy Feldman (PhD '07) interviews Thomas Kane, Walter H. Gale Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard. Feldman is currently a visiting fellow with the Center for Children and Families at the Brookings Institution.

The Hamilton Project | A policy forum held at the Brookings Institution. The forum began with introductory remarks by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, followed by three roundtable discussions. Papers by David J. Deming (PhD '10) and by Tara E. Watson (PhD '03) and Adam Looney (PhD'04) were the focus of two of the roundtables. View event video and dowload papers, full transcript, and presentation slides from the event webpage.

David Deming is Professor of Education and Economics at HGSE and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Tara Watson is Associate Professor of Economics at Williams College and served in the U.S. Treasury Department from 2015-2016 as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Microeconomic Analysis. Adam Looney is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings and served in the U.S. Treasury Department from 2013-2017 as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis.

The 74 | By Thomas J. Kane,  Walter H. Gale Professor of Education and Economics at Harvard University and faculty director of Center for Education Policy Research.

Gov Innovator Podcast | Andy Feldman (PhD '07) interviews Jeffrey Liebman, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at Harvard Kennedy School. Feldman is Visiting Fellow with the Center for Children and Families at the Brookings Institution.

HarvardX | Listen as Professor Ron Ferguson, from the Harvard Kennedy School, discusses the Boston Basics — five actions a parent or any caregiver can take to help young children thrive. [video: 2 minutes]

"The nugget for me [that most influenced our emphasis in Boston Basics] was 4 or 5 years ago looking at the early childhood longitudinal survey and seeing that racial and socioeconomic differences are not very apparent around the first birthday, but they are stark by the second birthday."

Washington Post | By Vanessa Williamson (Ph.D. '15). Williamson is a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and author of the new book Read My Lips: Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes.

American Academy of Arts and Sciences | Final report of the bipartisan Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, co-chaired by Danielle Allen of Harvard University, Stephen B. Heintz, and Eric Liu. The report includes 31 recommendations to strengthen America’s institutions and civic culture to help a nation in crisis emerge with a more resilient democracy.

View the report ►
View launch event and discussion ►

PolicyInsights.org | By Nathaniel Hendren and Ben Sprung-Keyser. This interactive website offers a guided tour of their paper, "A Unified Welfare Analysis of Government Policies," forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Hendren is a Professor of Economics at Harvard; Sprung-Keyser is a PhD student in Economics.

View the research ►

The Hamilton Project | By Jason Furman, Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. This policy proposal is part of a larger book available for download from the Hamilton Project, "Tackling the Tax Code: Efficient and Equitable Ways to Raise Revenue," and accompanying event hosted by the Hamilton Project.

View the book
View event video

American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings | By Suresh Naidu, Dani Rodrik, and Gabriel Zucman.  A revised and updated version of their introduction to the Economics for Inclusive Prosperity (EfIP) policy briefs, published originally in the Boston Review (Feb 2019).

Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies | By Alix Winter (PhD 2019) and Robert J. Sampson. Alix Winter received her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard in 2019 and is now a Postdoctoral Research Scholar with the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE) at Columbia University. Robert Sampson is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

American Economics Association | Among the top 10 research highlights of 2019, "Tech: Economists Wanted." An interview with Susan Athey and Michael Luca about the mutual influence between economics and the tech sector. Michael Luca is the Lee J. Styslinger III Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Harvard Kennedy School | Assistant Professor Benjamin Schneer's research shows a complex correlation between how members of Congress vote on immigration bills and their family history. Joint work with economist James Feigenbaum PhD 2016 and political scientist Maxwell Palmer, both of Boston University.

View the research ►

Immigration Initiative at Harvard
Findings from the National UnDACAmented Research Project (NURP). By Roberto G. Gonzales, Sayil Camacho, Kristina Brant, and Carlos Aguilar. Roberto G. Gonzales is Professor of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Kristina Brant is a PhD candidate in Sociology and an Inequality & Social Policy doctoral fellow.

Atlantic | A new analysis by Christopher Wimer PhD 2007, Sophie Collyer, and Xavier Jaravel suggests not only  that rising prices have been quietly taxing low-income families more heavily than rich ones, but also that, after accounting for that trend, the American poverty rate is significantly higher than the official measures suggest.

Wimer received his PhD in Sociology & Social Policy from Harvard in 2007 and is now Co-Director of the Center on Poverty and Social Policy (CPSP) at Columbia University. Xavier Jaravel received his PhD in Business Economics from Harvard in 2016 and is now Assistant Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. Jaravel's research on inflation inequality—showing that prices have risen more quickly for people at the bottom of the income distribution than for those at the top—which informs their analysis of the poverty rate, appears in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 2019).

View the brief: The Costs of Being Poor ►
View the research: Quarterly Journal of Economics  ►

LSE American Politics and Policy | A look at Michael Hankinson's American Political Science Review article, co-authored with Justin de Benedictis-Kessner (Boston University), on self-interest, NIMBYism, and the opioids crisis. Michael Hankinson received his PhD in Government & Social Policy in 2017. Their research appears in the Nov 2019 issue of APSR.

View the research ►

Vox EU | By Timothy J. Layton, Nicole Maestas, Daniel Prinz, and Boris Vabson. Stone PhD Scholar Daniel Prinz is a PhD candidate in Health Policy. Timothy Layton and Nicole Maestas are professors at Harvard Medical School. Boris Vabson is a Seidman Fellow at Harvard Medical School.

View the research ►

Behavioral Scientist | By Allison Daminger, PhD candidate in Sociology & Social Policy. "Cognitive work is gendered, but not uniformly so," Allison Daminger finds. "And if we want to understand how divisions of cognitive labor impact women, families, and society as a whole, this is a crucial insight." Based on her research, "The Cognitive Dimensions of Household Labor," recently published in the American Sociological Review.

View the research ►

ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science | By Robert Manduca, PhD candidate in Sociology & Social Policy. Issue on Policy Feedback in an Age of Polarization, Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, eds. Learn more about Robert's work:

robertmanduca.com ►

Kellogg Insights | A presidential assassination brought the trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt to power. The episode offers lessons for today’s antitrust regulators. Based on the research of Carola Frydman (PhD 2006) and colleagues Richard Baker and Eric Hilt. Frydman is Professor of Finance in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwester University. 

View the research ►

Economics for Inclusive Prosperity | By David J. Deming, Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.

Harvard Business Review | By Leslie K. John, Hayley Blunden, and Heidi Liu. Heidi Liu is a PhD candidate in Public Policy and and Inequality & Social Policy PhD Scholar.

View the research ►

Brookings Institution | By Vanessa Williamson PhD 2015, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

Vox EU | Stefanie Stantcheva, Professor of Economics, discusses her research (joint with Ufuk Akcigit, Santiago Caicedo Soler, Ernest Miguelez, and Valerio Sterzi), "Dancing with the Stars: Innovation Through Interactions," which shows that inventors learn by interacting with other inventors and produce better innovations [Video].

View the research ►

Washington Center for Equitable Growth
By Robert Manduca, PhD candidate in Sociology & Social Policy. A non-technical summary of Robert Manduca's new paper, "The Contribution of National Income Inequality to Regional Economic Divergence," forthcoming in Social Forces.

... View the research ▶
 

Learn more about Robert Manduca's work
robertmanduca.com

The Hamilton Project | By Will Dobbie (PhD 2013) and Crystal S. Yang (PhD 2013). Will Dobbie is now Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Crystal S. Yang is Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.