Bloomberg View | Discusses recent paper by Edward L. Glaeser and Charles G. Nathanson, "An Extrapolative Model of House-Price Dynamics," forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics. Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard. Nathanson is Assistant Professor of Finance at the Kellogg School of Management.
​​​​​​​View the research... Read more about A Better Theory to Explain Financial Bubbles

The New York Times | Nathaniel Hendren, Assistant Professor of Economics, and Robert Manduca, Ph.D. student in Sociology & Social Policy, are among a team of researchers from Stanford, Harvard, and Berkeley who have released an important new study of economic mobility in the U.S., which finds that only half of Americans in their thirties earn more than their parents did at the same age. A few decades ago, nearly all did.

The team was led by economist Raj Chetty of Stanford and Nathaniel Hendren of Harvard, principal investigators for the Equality of Opportunity project, in collaboration with sociologist David Grusky of Stanford. The study incorporates results from an independent working paper by Inequality & Social Policy doctoral fellow Robert Manduca titled “Opportunity No More: Declining Absolute Mobility in the United States, 1940-2010.”
View the new study (PDF)
Learn more: Equality of Opportunity project

Wired | Quotes Alexander Keyssar, Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy, who participated in a forum convened by US representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) this week on the Electoral College.

FiveThirtyEight | Explores the role of inequality in a new study of economic mobility by Raj Chetty, David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, Nathaniel Hendren (Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard), Robert Manduca (Ph.D. student in Sociology & Social Policy, Harvard), and Jimmy Narang.

"But inequality was a much bigger driver [than economic growth]. The researchers analyzed a scenario in which growth followed its real-world path, but that growth was distributed more equally. In that scenario, the rate of mobility would rise to 80 percent, wiping out more than two-thirds of the 40-year decline.

Ultimately, Hendren said, restoring mobility will require both. 'You need growth, and you need it to be broad-based,' Hendren said."

Washington Post | Coverage of new study by Raj Chetty, David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, Nathaniel Hendren (Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard), Robert Manduca (Ph.D. student in Sociology & Social Policy, Harvard), and Jimmy Narang.

"Previously, Chetty's team studied a different measure of mobility: the ability of children to move up or down America's income ladder as they grow up, when compared to other Americans. The new research attempts, for the first time, to quantify so-called "absolute mobility," which people often associate with the American Dream: the odds of a child earning more as an adult than his or her parents earned at the same age.

"The researchers say rising concentration of income among the richest Americans explains 70 percent of what has been a steady decline in absolute mobility from the baby boom generation to millennials, while a slowdown in economic growth explains just 30 percent...

"If you don’t have that kind of widespread economic growth across the income distribution, it’s tough to grow up and earn more than your parents,” Hendren said. “This is a distinct reason to focus on inequality."

Bloomberg | Features research by David Deming (Ph.D. '10), Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, on "The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market." 
View the research (updated Aug 2016)

Quartz | Covrage of recently-published paper by David Evans (Ph.D. '05), a senior economist at the World Bank, and Anna Popova of Stanford Unversity.

The New York Times | Lawrence Katz, Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics, comments on new study on U.S. economic inequality by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. Also cited, the work of Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee Professor of Economics, and Katz on the race between education and technology as a driver of inequality.

FiveThirtyEight | Quotes and cites research by Bernard Fraga (Ph.D. '13), Assistant Professor of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington. Fraga's article, "Redistricting and the Causal Impact of Race on Voter Turnout," appears in the Journal of Politics (Oct 2015). 
​​​​​​​View the research

The New York Times | Quoted: Amitabh Chandra, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy.

Fusion | Quotes David Hureau (Ph.D. '16), Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at SUNY Albany.

The Trace | Cites David Hureau (Ph.D. '16), Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at SUNY Albany and an affiliate of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. Hureau, whose research focuses on the relationship between violent crime and social inequality, has studied the market for illegal guns.

Wall Street Journal | Cites Alexander Keyssar, Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy: “The amendment process is extremely difficult,” said Keyssar...who added that it nearly happened in 1969 when the House approved a proposal to reform the electoral process only to have it killed the next year by a Senate filibuster led by North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin.

Vox | Features perspective from Peter A. Hall, Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies.

Center on Budget & Policy Priorities | Matthew Desmond talked housing policy with William Julius Wilson as the closing plenary speaker at the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities State Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. The three-day conference brought together policy experts, state leaders, and advocates to discuss policies to promote equity and prosperity.

Vox | Cites Daniel Carpenter, Allie S. Freed Professor of Government: "Carpenter, who wrote a history of the FDA, has called the bill the "19th Century Frauds Act." He continued: "The clauses on using purely observational data for drug approval and what amounts to anecdotal evidence for devices are deeply anti-scientific and would undermine the credibility of the American market for drugs and medical devices...This act would seriously undermine that credibility, and by extension the market as a whole."

Institutional Investor | "A trio of finance and economics professors [Antoinette Scholar (MIT), Sendhil Mullainathan (Harvard), and Markus Noeth (University of Hamburg)] concluded in a paper published in 2012 that retail investors really do need fiduciaries to shield them from poor financial advice. They finally got some protection in the Department of Labor’s so-called fiduciary rule, set to take effect in April 2017 — but the future of that rule now hangs in the balance, just as these researchers have produced fresh findings reinforcing their original conclusions."

Investment News | The practice boosts employees' savings rates, but it may also be financed in some cases by increases in consumer debt, according to new research in a forthcoming report by John Beshears (Harvard Business School), David Laibson (Dept of Economics), Brigitte Madrian (Harvard Kennedy School).

Harvard Gazette | Faculty from Harvard's Government Department—including Danielle Allen, Jennifer Hochschild, Claudine Gay—gathered for a post-election panel, "Trump's America: What's Next?," which explored what a Trump administration portends for voting rights, foreign policy, economics, and American democracy.

Vox | "There’s a growing body of research in political science and political psychology suggesting that even very mild messages or cues that touch on race can alter political opinions." Highlights work by Ryan D. Enos, Associate Professor of Government, who "sent pairs of native Spanish-speaking Latino men to ride commuter trains in Boston, surveyed their fellow riders' political views both before and after, and also surveyed riders on trains not used in the experiment as a control.

"'The results were clear,' Enos wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. 'After coming into contact, for just minutes each day, with two more Latinos than they would otherwise see or interact with, the riders, who were mostly white and liberal, were sharply more opposed to allowing more immigrants into the country and favored returning the children of illegal immigrants to their parents’ home country. It was a stark shift from their pre-experiment interviews, during which they expressed more neutral attitudes.'

"Dwell on that. Merely being in the presence of Latino people changed liberal voters’ attitudes on immigration. That’s among the most subtle cues imaginable. And this is a study conducted in the field, among real people, not in a lab."
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.
 

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.