The Economist | Delves into new study by George J. Borjas, Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and coauthors Kirk Doran and Ying Shen of the University of Notre Dame, which examines the productivity of American mathemeticians following the influx of Chinese graduate students from China's liberalization in 1978. The study is forthcoming in the Journal of Human Resources.
​​​​​​​View the research

Bloomberg View | Highlights new work by David Autor (MIT), David Dorn (University of Zurich), Lawrence Katz (Harvard), Christina Patterson (MIT), and John Van Reenen (MIT) exploring the relationship between market concentration and labor's falling share of GDP. The paper is forthcoming in American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings.
View the research

The Atlantic | When states began to require more math courses, black high-school graduates began to see bigger paychecks. Delves into new NBER paper by Joshua Goodman, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
View the research

Fortune | Digs into new study by Harvard's Amanda Pallais, author of a new study (joint with Leonardo Bursztyn of University of Chicago and Thomas Fujiwara of Princeton), "'Acting Wife': Marriage Market Incentives and Labor Market Investments," based on two field experiments carried out in an elite MBA program.
View the research

Urban Affairs Forum | By George Galster, Distinguished Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, Wayne State University. First in a series sponsored by Urban Affairs Review, Galster's essay summarizes the empirical evidence on segregation, geographic inequalities, and opportunity, including research by Inequality & Social Policy affiliates Edward Glaeser, David Hureau (Ph.D. '16), Nathaniel Hendren, Christopher Jencks, Lawrence Katz, Ann Owens (Ph.D. '12), Robert J. Sampson, and Patrick Sharkey (Ph.D. '07).

NPR Morning Edition | NPR interviews Leonardo Bursztyn (University of Chicago), co-author of a new study with Harvard economist Amanda Pallais and Thomas Fujiwara (Princeton)
View the research

National University of Singapore News | Coverage of recent public lecture, “Postindustrial Low Fertility in Europe and East Asia: Lessons for Singapore," featuring Mary C. Brinton, Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology at Harvard, and Josephine Teo, Senior Minister of State. 

MarketWatch | Delves into new NBER paper by Joshua Goodman, Associate Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, who found that "state changes in minimum high school math requirements substantially increase black students’ completed math coursework and their later earnings." Goodman estimated that the return to an additional math course for a student at the margin is 10 percent, "roughly half the return to a year of high school." The paper concluded that "Rigorous standards for quantitative coursework can close meaningful portions of racial gaps in economic outcomes."
View the research

EconoFact | EconoFact launches as "a non-partisan publication designed to bring key facts and incisive analysis to the national debate on economic and social policies."

The posts are written by leading academic economists from across the country who belong to the EconoFact Network—a group that includes Inequality & Social Policy alumni David Deming (Ph.D. '10), now HKS and HGSE; Nora Gordon (Ph.D. '02), Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy; and Tara Watson (Ph.D. '03), former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, now Williams College.

EconoFact published by the Edward R. Murrow Center for a Digital World at The Fletcher School at Tufts University.

The Straits Times | Coverage of Mary C. Brinton's Distinguished Public Lecture, "Postindustrial Low Fertility in Europe and East Asia: Lessons for Singapore," delivered at the National University of Singapore in January. Brinton is Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology at Harvard.

The Atlantic | Americans are “too optimistic” about the odds of poor citizens getting richer “relative to actual mobility in the U.S.,” according to a new paper by Harvard economists Alberto Alesina, Stefanie Stantcheva, and Edoardo Teso (Ph.D. candidate in Political Economy and Government). In experiments, giving people more pessimistic information, they found, increased support for redistribution. Stefanie Stantcheva will be presenting this research, "Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution," in the Harvard Inequality Seminar, February 13, 2017.

RVA City News | Thad Williamson (Ph.D. '04) has been appointed Senior Policy Adviser for Opportunity for the City of Richmond by Mayor Levar M. Stoney. Williamson served as first director of the City's Office of Community Wealth Building while on leave from the University of Richmond in 2014-2016, where he is Associate Professor of Leadership Studies and Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Law. He will serve part-time in the new post while maintaining his professorship at the University of Richmond.

Russell Sage Foundation | The Russell Sage Foundation announced the appointment of 15 leading social scientists as Visiting Scholars for the 2017-2018 academic year. Among them: Deirdre Bloome (Ph.D. '14), Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan, who will investigate "the effects of rising inequality in the U.S. on intergenerational income persistence, or the extent to which children’s economic outcomes in adulthood resemble those of their parents."

Brookings Institution | By Judith Scott-Clayton (Ph.D. '09), Associate Professor of Economics and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University: "[D]iscussion has increasingly focused on whether free tuition is the most effective use of additional funds for higher education.

"Specifically, does the marginal dollar spent on higher education have a bigger impact on enrollment and completion if it is used to reduce the sticker prices students face, or instead to increase institutional expenditures that affect the experience they receive once they enroll? Just a few days after Cuomo’s announcement, David Deming (Ph.D. '10) of Harvard University and Christopher Walters of the University of California at Berkeley presented a new study at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, using a national database of state funding levels, tuition policies, institutional expenditures, and student outcomes over time to ask precisely this question."

Freakonomics Radio | Guest Raj Chetty of Stanford University discusses his work with Harvard's Nathaniel Hendren from their Equality of Opportunity project. Also notes their finding, suggested by the work of Robert Putnam, that areas with high levels of social capital in their data also seem to exhibit high level of social mobility. [audio + transcript]

Marketplace | Cites Amitabh Chandra, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy.

High-deductible plans push people to shop around for health treatments, often without the benefit of information on quality and price. That worries Amitabh Chandra, an economist and health care researcher at Harvard University. 

"Simply calling the patient a consumer doesn’t make buying health care anything like buying cars and computers," said Chandra.

In fact, Chandra’s research shows that even higher-income earners with more economic flexibility do not really shop for health care efficiently, even when they're given a state-of-the-art computer program to compare prices. People on these plans tend to forgo all sorts of care, regardless of their own need and health status.

...In health care research, a new consensus is forming, in part because of Chandra’s work: high-deductible plans with cheaper premiums work well for people who are generally healthy. But for those who are chronically ill or live on lower incomes, these plans can be a disaster. 

View the research ... Read more about Do high-deductible plans make the health care system better?

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis | The Minneapolis Fed announced today the launch of the Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute, a new multidisciplinary research initiative "to improve the economic well-being of all Americans, with a particular focus on structural barriers that limit full participation in economic opportunity and advancement in the United States." Harvard's Lawrence Katz, Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics, and Robert Putnam, Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, participate on its Board of Advisors.

The Institute also announced its Visiting Scholars Program, with fellowships for both early-career Ph.D. social scientists and senior visiting scholars. Application deadline: February 28, 2017.

Washington Post | Talks with Stefanie Stantcheva, Assistant Professor of Economics, about her new study (joint with Alberto Alesina and Edoardo Teso), "Intergenerational Mobility and Support for Redistribution." Stantcheva will be presenting this research in the Harvard Inequality Seminar, Feb 13, 2017.

“We find that this idea of the American Dream, going from rags to riches, is really salient in people’s minds,” Stantcheva said. “In the U.S., people are too optimistic about intergenerational mobility, particularly about the chances of making it from the very bottom to the very top.” Such perceptions — or misperceptions, as the case may be — are important because they may influence how we think about government programs such as the social safety net or public education.

View the research 

Bangor Daily News | "Americans who fail to acknowledge the role racism has played in shaping U.S. history and culture miss the true legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., scholar and author Khalil Gibran Muhammad said in Maine on Monday."

Muhammad, Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, was at Bates College on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to deliver his keynote address, "No Reparation without Racial Education: Martin Luther King on the Tyranny of Ignorance," as part of the Bates College program "Reparations: Addressing Racial Injustices."

The Economist | Cites research by David Deming (Ph.D. '10), Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Graduate School of Education, on "The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market."
​​​​​​​View the research

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

Foreign Affairs | By Douglas W. Elmendorf. "The development and passage of the ACHA is a case study in how not to make public policy," writes Elmendorf. Douglas Elmendorf is Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy. He served as the director of the Congressional Budget Office from January 2009 through March 2015.

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis | Robert Putnam, Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, joined the inaugural conference of the Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute, where he spoke in the opening panel on segregation and inequality. Putnam and Harvard economist Lawrence Katz both serve on the Institute's Board of Advisors.

Why Opportunity and Inclusion Matter to America's Economic Strength
Lael Brainard of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors delivered the keynote address, highlighting issues of employment, household financial health, the geography of opportunity, and affordable housing. She also drew attention to insights generated by the Boston Fed's Workng Cities Challenge.
View text of remarks
 

Earlier this spring Governor Brainard delivered the 2017 Malcolm Wiener Lecture in International Political Economy in the JFK Jr. Forum at Harvard Kennedy School.

Harvard Kennedy School PolicyCast | Professor David Deming (PhD '10) sits down with PolicyCast host Matt Cadwallader to talk about his new Harvard Kennedy School course, The Causes and Consequences of Inequality (SUP-206). If traditional jobs like manufacturing aren’t coming back, how can the economy adapt? How can the American education system better prepare the next generation for the needs of the modern economy? Deming's research grapples with these questions.

Harvard Gazette | This past fall, Harvard President Drew Faust convened a University-wide task force to examine ways to help Harvard thrive as a place where all members of its increasingly diverse community feel that they truly belong. The task force is co-chaired by James Bryant Conant University Professor Danielle Allen, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics; Harvard Kennedy School Academic Dean Archon Fung, the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship; and Vice President for Campus Services Meredith Weenick.

The task force’s co-chairs recently sat down with the Harvard Gazette to discuss this report, their first year, and what’s next for this important work.

U.S. Congress Joint Economic Commitee | Professors Robert D. Putnam and Mario L. Small (PhD '01), joined by Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute and Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs, testified before the Joint Economic Committee on the potential role for social capital in addressing U.S. economic and social challenges.

Robert Putnam, Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, focused on two generational concerns: why social capital matters in narrowing the opportunity gap among today's children, and what a boomer generation "aging alone" portends for U.S. eldercare costs in the years ahead.
Read Robert Putnam testimony

Mario Small, Grafstein Family Professor of Sociology, discussed the evidence that "early education and childcare programs may be an especially effective venue to help low-income parents generate social capital,"..." that this social capital is beneficial, and that there is reason to believe that targeted interventions may help such programs maximize these benefits."
Read Mario Small testimony

Gov Innovator Podcast | Andy Feldman (PhD '07) interviews Carrie Conaway (AM '01), Chief Strategy and Research Officer for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Conaway was recently appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Board for Education Sciences. Feldman is currently a visiting fellow with the Center for Children and Families at the Brookings Institution.

The 74 | Professor David Deming (PhD '10) on the lasting benefits of Head Start, school accountability, and integration. Deming is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The New York Times Magazine
By Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences.
 

Brookings Institution—The Brown Center Chalkboard | By Martin R. West (Faculty, Ph.D. '06)

Russell Sage Foundation | By Christopher Wimer (Ph.D. '07)

Congressional testimony| Testimony of  Scott Winship (Ph.D. '09) before Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives.

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston | By Alicia Sasser Modestino (Ph.D. '01), Daniel Shoag (Ph.D. '11), and Joshua Ballance

Usable Knowledge (HGSE) | Interview with Ron Ferguson

The Journalist's Resource | Katherine Levine Einstein (Ph.D. '12)

Global Development Network | By Dan Honig, Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy. Award-winning essay of GDN Next Horizons Essay Competition.

Congressional Testimony | Testimony of Justin Wolfers (Ph.D. '01) before Committee on Finance, U.S. Senate.

Washington Center for Equitable Growth | By Elisabeth Jacobs

Scholars Strategy Network | By Lawrence R. Jacobs and Theda Skocpol

Brookings Institution—The Brown Center Chalkboard | By Matthew M. Chingos and Martin R. West (Faculty, Ph.D. '06)

Scholars Strategy Network | By Theda Skocpol

Poverty and Race Research Action Council | By Eva Rosen (Ph.D. '14)

Brookings Institution—The Brown Center Chalkboard | By Martin R. West (Faculty, Ph.D. '06)

Journalist's Resource | William Julius Wilson, Robert Sampson

Washington Center for Equitable Growth | By Elisabeth Jacobs

Boston University Initiative on Cities | By Katherine Levine Einstein (Ph.D. '12) and David M. Glick

Scholars Strategy Network | by Judith Scott-Clayton (Ph.D. '09)

Scholars Strategy Network | By Jackelyn Hwang, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology & Social Policy.

Journalist's Resource | Joshua Goodman