The Economist | Cites research by Joshua Goodman (HKS), Julia Melkers (Georgia Institute of Technology), and Amanda Pallais (Harvard Economics). A summary of their study, "Can Online Delivery Increase Access to Education?", can be found in NBER Digest.
View the research

The New York Times | David Brooks column cites research by Amitabh Chandra, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy (joint with Amy Finkelstein of MIT, Adam Sacarny of Columbia, and Chad Syverson of Chicago Booth), summarized in their recent piece in Harvard Business Review, "Perhaps Market Forces Do Work in Health Care After All."

Yet, as Chandra pointed out, in other work, he and colleagues also found that people struggle to be good 'consumers'  with high-deductible health plans, contrary to his expectation before conducting the research. That study (joint with Zarek Brot-Goldberg, Benjamin Handel, and Jonathan Holstad, all of UC Berkeley) was the subject of Margot Sanger-Katz column in The New York Times last year.

Quartz | Discusses findings of a new study by Harvard economists Alberto Alesina, Stefanie Stantcheva, and Edoardo Teso (Ph.D. candidate in Politial Economy and Government). Stantcheva will be presenting this work, "Intergenerational Mobility and Support for Redistribution," in the Harvard Inequality Seminar, Feb 13, 2017.
View the research

Fast Company | Digs into new study by Harvard economists Alberto Alesina, Stefanie Stantcheva, and Edoardo Teso (Ph.D. candidate in Political Economy and Government), "Intergenerational Mobility and Support for Redistribution."

Across the U.S. as a whole, Americans overestimate the probability of making it from the bottom quintile to the top quintile by almost 50%. The actual probability is that 7.8 kids out of 100 will do it, but we believe the probability to be on average to be 11.4 kids. It "seems that information about mobility has not yet made its way into people’s minds, given that both left- and right-wing respondents still overestimate mobility in the U.S.," says Stefanie Stantcheva, one of the authors, in an email. She says the higher perception-actuality gaps in the South could be explained by higher rates of "income segregation"—that is, that richer and poorer people tend to live further apart.

View the research

The New York Times | "The rise of automation...has prompted an intense debate among economists and some policy makers about just what society and especially government owes these workers. One place to start, [Harvard economist] Lawrence Katz said, would be for the government to provide more funding for retraining and also develop a wage insurance program to cover differences in salaries as workers migrate to new, lower-paid jobs from disappearing, higher-paid ones."

FiveThirtyEight | Features Todd Rogers, Associate Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Brigitte Madrian, Aetna Professor of Public Policy and Corporate Management, who are parties to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court concerning a New York state law banning surcharges on credit card purchases while permitting discounts for cash transactions—and how the law should take into account the insights of behavioral economics.

The New York Times | Discusses several new papers presented at the annual meeting of the American Economics Association, including an online minimum wage experiment by John J. Horton (Ph.D. '11), Assistant Professor at NYU Stern School of Business, and a study by Michael Luca of HBS (joint with Dara Luca of Mathematica Policy Research), which examined the impact of the minimum wage on restaurant exit.

Inside Higher Ed | Reporting from the American Historical Association's 131st annual meeting in Denver, January 5-8. Quoted: Professors Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Leah Wright Rigueur of the Harvard Kennedy School. Muhammad participated in an opening plenary panel, "The First 100 Days: Priority for a New President."

Politifact | Edward L. Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics, is interviewed for Politifact's Obameter series, which tracks the record of President Barack Obama.

“In general, the response to the Great Recession was forceful but sensible,” said Edward Glaeser, a Harvard University economist. “There were few massive mistakes on his watch.”

On housing policy: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant mortgage-sector players whose troubles exacerbated the housing crash and the subsequent recession, “remain unreformed” as part of Obama’s response to the housing crisis, said Harvard’s Glaeser.

The Atlantic—CityLab | Oscar Boyson’s documentary, The Future of Cities, is a jet-setting look at problems and solutions in cities centers across the world. The 18-minute film, which features Harvard's Edward L. Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics, accompanies the article.

The Atlantic—CityLab | Features recent study of 72 U.S. mayors by Katherine Levine Einstein (Ph.D. '12) and David Glick, both Assistant Professors of Political Science at Boston University. Their article, "Mayors, Partisanship, and Redistribution," appears in Urban Affairs Review.
View the research (full text access)

Politifact | Devah Pager, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy and Director of the Inequality & Social Policy program, is interviewed for Politifact's Obameter series, which tracks the record of President Barack Obama.

Harvard sociologist Devah Pager said it is difficult to evaluate progress on ex-offender employment because there isn't solid, broad data on the employment of people with criminal records. The available data is limited in scope.

"There are some evaluation studies that suggest prison-to-work programs can have substantial effects," she said.

The New York Times | Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard, has a term for this: “retrospective wait unemployment,” or “looking for the job you used to have.”

“It’s not a skill mismatch, but an identity mismatch,” he said. “It’s not that they couldn’t become a health worker, it’s that people have backward views of what their identity is.”

Vox—The Weeds Podcast | Vox's Sarah Kliff and Matt Yglesias dive deep into early work by Amitabh Chandra, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy, to offer tax wonk tips about when to time your child's birth [begins 41:40 mark]. Prospective parents can check out the research, "Taxes and the Timing of Birth" (joint with Stacy Dickert‐Conlin), in the Journal of Political Economy (1999). 
View the research

Brookings Institution | Martin West (Ph.D. '06), Associate Professor of Education, hosted a Brookings Institution forum with Arne Duncan (U.S. Secretary of Education, 2009-2015), Lindsay Fryer of the Penn Hill Group, and Gerard Robinson of the American Enterprise Institute. Video and transcript available.

The American Conservative | Profile of George J. Borjas, Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.

Wall Street Journal | Cites Harvard Kennedy School Professor Brigitte Madrian, who notes that in the aggregate, 401(k) participants under the age of 55 withdraw 30 to 40 cents from their retirement accounts for every dollar contributed. One reason: Many 401(k) participants liquidate their accounts when they switch employers, paying income taxes and a 10% penalty in many cases. Discusses proposed policy remedies.

Pro Publica | Is it possible to create a criminal risk score formula "that is equally predictive for all races without disparities in who suffers the harm of incorrect predictions?" Pro Publica explains why "four groups of scholars, working separately and using different methodologies, all reached the same conclusion. It's not."

Discusses work on this problem by Jon Kleinberg (Cornell), Sendhil Mullainathan (Harvard), and Manish Raghavan (Cornell), "Inherent Tradeoffs in the Fair Determination of Risk Scores."
View the research

U.S. News and World Report | Quotes Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Washington Post | Interview with behavioral scientist Todd Rogers, Associate Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, "Artful Paltering: The Risks and Rewards of Using Truthful Statements to Mislead Others." The study is co-authored by Richard Zeckhauser (HKS), Francesca Gino (HBS), Michael I. Norton (HBS), and Maurice E. Schweitzer (University of Pennsylvania).
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