Vox | An illustrated guide to what economics research tells us about the gender wage gap, featuring Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee Professor of Economics.

Pacific Standard | A new study suggests expectations are changing faster for women than for men. Coverage of Alexandra Killewald's research, "Money, Work, and Marital Stability: Assessing Change in the Gendered Determinants of Divorce," published in the current issue of the American Sociological Review.
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NY Magazine—The Science of US | "In a new study published in the American Sociological Review, Harvard sociologist Alexandra Achen Killewald has found that the things that increase the probability of divorce — as they relate to work, at least — have changed over the past couple decades. It turns out that the amount of money that either the husband or wife makes isn’t that important: For contemporary couples, the biggest determinant is whether the husband is working full-time."
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Bloomberg | A new study by Alexandra Killewald, Professor of Sociology, suggests that neither financial strains nor women's increased ability to get out of an unhappy marriage is predictive of divorce. Killewald's research, "Money, Work, and Marital Stability: Assessing Change in the Gendered Determinants of Divorce," appears in the current issue of the American Sociological Review.
View the ASR article (ungated)

NYMag.com—Science of Us | Delves into new study by psychologist Jennifer Lerner of the Harvard Kennedy School (co-authored by Christine Ma-Kellams of the University of La Verne) and its implications for policy and practice.
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Vox | Features insights of Leah Wright Rigueur, Assistant Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School.

The Economist | First in a series on seminal economic ideas delves into George Akerlof's 1970 paper, "The Market for Lemons"—and highlights how Daniel Shoag's findings (joint with Robert Clifford, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston) on the impact of credit check bans on employment draw insight from the field of information economics that Akerlof's work spurred. Shoag (Ph.D. '11), Associate Professor at Harvard Kennedy School, and Clifford find that, contrary to the bans' intent, prohibiting the use of credit scores in hiring led to relatively worse outcomes for black and young job-seekers. 
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The Economist | New study by George J. Borjas, Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, counters the findings of a classic paper in immigration economics. Borjas reexamines the impact of the 1980 Mariel boatlift on Miami-area wages by focusing on high school dropouts, the group most comparable to the Marielitos, he argues, over 60% of whom were high school dropouts. The paper is forthcoming in Industrial and Labor Relations Review.
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The Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking—on which Jeffrey Liebman, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Public Policy, serves—convened its first public meeting on July 22. The Commission was established under the bipartisan Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission Act of 2016 (P.L. 114-140), jointly sponsored by Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 30, 2016. The Commission is charged with examining aspects of how to increase the availability and use of data in order to build evidence about government programs, while protecting privacy and confidentiality.
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View meeting materials and slides

Harvard Kennedy School | Highlights new research by Jennifer Lerner, Professor of Public Policy and Management and co-founder of the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory.

Harvard Kennedy School | Highlights new research by Amitabh Chandra, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy.

NPR | Details study by Michael Luca and colleagues Benjamin Edelman and Daniel Svirsky of Harvard Business School, which found widespread pattern of racial discrimination on Airbnb.
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The Economist | Details new NBER paper by Roland Fryer, Henry Lee Professor of Economics, which examines racial differences in police use of force.
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ABC Radio National (Australia) | Historian Leah Wright Rigueur is interviewed for this print article. You may also listen to the full program [29 minutes] or read the full transcript.  Rigueur is an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Harvard Gazette | In this topsy-turvy presidential campaign, the old laws may no longer apply. Harvard analysts weigh in on norms and culture of democracy—including Jennifer Hochschild, the Henry LaBarre Jayne professor of Government, and political theorist Danielle Allen, who directs the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard.

The Economist | How do growing numbers of temp workers, now over 2% of the U.S. workforce, affect temporary and staff workers alike? Quotes Lawrence Katz, Elisabeth Allen Professor of Economics, who estimates that temps face a 15% earnings penalty even after controlling for age, education, and other demographic variables, and cites his earlier work with Alan Krueger, which found that  states with a higher share of temporary employment in the late 1980s experienced lower wage growth in the 1990s. 

Washington Post | Quotes Roland Fryer, Henry Lee Professor of Economics, one of 33 invited participants who attended the "White House Convening on Building Community Trust," July 13, 2016.

Marketplace | Features Amitabh Chandra, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy. "The name of the act is the Affordable Care Act," Chandra said. "But I think American health care is still largely unaffordable to many, many people." To truly build on Obama’s legacy, he said policymakers must tackle the problem of drugs and procedures that are expensive but really don't offer much value.

Vox | Historian Leah Wright Rigueur of the  Harvard Kennedy School and Political Scientist Ryan Enos of the Harvard Government Department are among the experts interviewed.

The New York Times | Coverage of new NBER working paper by Roland Fryer, Henry Lee Professor of Economics: "A new study confirms that black men and women are treated differently in the hands of law enforcement. They are more likely to be touched, handcuffed, pushed to the ground or pepper-sprayed by a police officer, even after accounting for how, where, and when they encounter the police. But when it comes to the most lethal form of force — police shootings — the study finds no racial bias."
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Quartz | Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, earned a spot on 15 of 36 lists, the most recommended non-fiction book of 2016.

Chicago Tribune | Ten selections, including Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences.

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

Education Next | By Martin R. West (PhD '06), Associate Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Council on Foreign Relations | Part I of the Robert Menschel Economics Symposium: A conversation with psychologist Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel prize in economic sciences. Part II: A discussion on behavioral insights into policymaking with Jeffrey Liebman, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School; Maya Shankar, founder and Chair of the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST) under President Obama; and Elspeth Kirkman, senior vice president with The Behavioral Insights Team, North America. (Video + transcript)
View Part I: Daniel Kahneman

The Atlantic | By Vanessa Williamson (Ph.D. '15). The vexed relationship people have with IRS forms tends to make them more conservative, Williamson finds. Williamson is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and the author of the new book Read My Lips: Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes (Princeton University Press, 2017).

The New York Times Book Review
By Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. "Two new books offer timely and complementary ways of understanding America’s punitive culture," writes Muhammad: Locking Up Our Own, by James Forman Jr., and A Colony in a Nation, by Chris Hayes.

Marketplace | Daniel Shoag (PhD'11), Associate Professor at Harvard Kennedy School, sees reasons to worry about declining geographical mobility, driven in part by higher housing costs in high-growth areas, which limit opportunity for low-income Americans and increase inequality.

Harvard Graduate School Alumni Day | By Douglas Elmendorf, Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy, who delivered the keynote address at Harvard GSAS Alumni Day 2017.

Brookings Institution | The Brookings Institution hosted an event marking the release of Read My Lips: Why Americans are Proud to Pay Taxes, by Vanessa Williamson (Ph.D. '15), a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. A panel of experts joined Williamson to discuss how Americans view their responsibility as taxpayers and what Americans’ attitudes about taxes can tell us about public opinions of government as a whole. With E.J. Dionne, Heather Boushey (Washington Center for Equitable Growth), and Frank Clemente (Americans for Fair Taxes). (Video: 90 minutes)

Charlie Rose | A conversation about the economy and Trump's plans for tax reform with Larry Summers, president emeritus of Harvard University and former treasury secretary under President Clinton. (Video: 30 minutes)

New England Journal of Medicine | By Amitabh Chandra and Rachel E. Sachs. Chandra is Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Sachs is Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.

Christian Science Monitor | By Natasha Warikoo (Ph.D. 05), Associate Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education. "Creating equal opportunity is a huge challenge. But we can start by changing our attitudes toward the admissions process," Warikoo writes.

New England Journal of Medicine | By Daniel Carpenter, Allie S. Freed Professor of Government, Harvard University.

Crain's Chicago Business | By Anjanette M. Chan Tack and Mario L. Small. Discussion of the authors' new in-depth case study, recently published in Sociological Science, which interviewed African American students in high poverty Chicago neighborhoods about how they form friendships. "What we uncovered surprised us," Chan Tack and Small write.

Small is Grafstein Family Professor of Sociology at Harvard. Chan Tack is a doctoral candidate at University of Chicago. 

The Institute of Public Administration Australia ACT Division (IPAA ACT) and the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government (BETA) hosted Harvard professors Sendhil Mullainathan, Ziad Obermeyer, and Brigitte Madrian for a presentation and discussion of predictive policy—"how it can solve some of society’s most difficult problems and why it matters to government policy making." The event was led by political scientist Michael J. Hiscox, who is currently on leave from his Harvard whle serving as founding director of the Behavioural Economics Team (BETA) in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australian Government. Includes video highlights (7 minutes) and full-length event video (~75 minutes).

Wall Street Journal | By Michael I. Norton, Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Involving customers or employees in charity decisions can help boost sales or job satisfaction.

Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center | Doug Elmendorf, Dean of Harvard Kennedy School and former director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 2009-2015, discussed why the CBO exists, how it works, and how the media reports on its findings, in a conversation at the Shorenstein Center, March 22, 2017. Highlights and audio.

WGBH Innovation Hub | Alexandra Killewald, Professor of Sociology, guests to talk about wealth inequality.

Center for American Progress | By David Cutler and Emily Gee. David Cutler is the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard University. Emily Gee is a Health Economist at the Center for American Progress.

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.

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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].

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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.

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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.

Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School, announced the launch of a new initiative - Economics for Inclusive Prosperity (EfIP) - a network of academic economists dedicated to producing creative policy ideas for an inclusive society and economy. Co-directing the initiative are Dani Rodrik, Suresh Naidu of Columbia University, and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California, Berkeley. Download the (free) EfIP eBook: Economics for Inclusive Prosperity: An Introduction and policy briefs.

View the EfIP eBook (pdf) ▶ 
View all policy briefs ▶

Washington Center for Equitable Growth | By Elisabeth Jacobs PhD 2008, Senior Director for Family Economic Security, Washington Center for Economic Growth.

Washington Center for Equitable Growth | By Robert Manduca, PhD candidate in Sociology & Social Policy. This article summarizes findings from “Income Inequality and the Persistence of Racial Economic Disparities” in Sociological Science. 

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US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty | The US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty is a collaboration of 24 leading scholars, policy experts, and practitioners tasked with answering one big, bold, and exciting question: What would it take to dramatically increase mobility from poverty? This two-year project was funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Co-authored by David T. Ellwood, Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and Nisha G. Patel, Executive Director of the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty, Urban Institute

• Read the press release
• Download the full report
• Watch the overview video