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The Barbaric History of Sugar in America

August 14, 2019

The New York Times | By Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. This essay is part of the 1619 Project examining the legacy of slavery in America.



We Have the Tools to Reverse the Rise in Inequality

November 20, 2019

PIIE | By Olivier Blanchard and Dani Rodrik. What the authors learned from the Combating Inequality conference, held Oct 17-18 at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Olivier Blanchard is the C. Fred Bergsten Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Dani Rodrik is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School.

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Why Voter Turnout is So Low in the United States

October 17, 2019

Jacobin | An interview with Alexander Keyssar, Matthew W. Stirling, Jr Professor of History and Social Policy and the author of The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States.



Lawrence Katz on researching housing and economic mobility to create moves to opportunity

August 7, 2019

JPAL | A new paper summarizing preliminary findings from the Creating Moves to Opportunity (CMTO) study was just released. Results demonstrate that helping low-income families overcome barriers to moving to higher-opportunity areas may be a promising strategy for reducing residential segregation and promoting economic mobility. We sat down with Lawrence Katz—Co-Scientific Director of J-PAL North America and one of the authors on the CMTO study—to collect his reflections on the preliminary results, how this study builds upon his previous research, and how these and future results may inform housing policy moving forward. 



Mainstream conservative parties paved the way for far-right nationalism

December 2, 2019

Washington Post | By Bart Bonikowski (Associate Professor of Sociology) and Daniel Ziblatt (Eaton Professor of the Science of Government). First in a six-article series edited by Bonikowski and Ziblatt. Inspired by a 2018 academic conference on populism and the future of democracy organized by Harvard Univesity's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs in Talloires, France.



Drawing the Line on Gerrymandering

December 10, 2019

HKS PolicyCast | With the 2020 census looming, Assistant Professor of Public Policy Benjamin Schneer says redistricting can be made more democratic—even in deeply partisan states [Audio + transcript].



The Myth of the Two-Parent Home

December 9, 2019

The New York Times | By Christina Cross, Postdoctoral Fellow (2019-2021) and Assistant Professor of Sociology (beginning 2021). New research indicates that access to resources, more than family structure, matters for black kids’ success. "If this is the case, Cross argues, "then what deserves policy attention is not black families’ deviation from the two-parent family model but rather structural barriers such as housing segregation and employment discrimination that produce and maintain racialized inequalities in family life."



Economics After Neoliberalism

February 15, 2019

Boston Review | By Suresh Naidu (Columbia University), Dani Rodrik (Harvard Kennedy School), and Gabriel Zucman (University of California Berkeley). Contemporary economics is finally breaking free from its market fetishism, offering plenty of tools we can use to make society more inclusive, the authors argue.



Tackling Inequality from the Middle

December 10, 2019

Project Syndicate | By Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy. The rise of populist movements and street protests from Chile to France has made inequality a high priority for politicians of all stripes in the world's rich democracies. But a fundamental question has received relatively little attention: What type of inequality should policymakers tackle?



City Slicker

December 15, 2019

IMF Finance and Development | Chris Wellisz profiles Harvard’s Edward Glaeser, who sees urbanization as a path to prosperity. Edward Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics.

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