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2019 in Research Highlights

December 27, 2019

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.



We need a national conversation about our health care priorities

December 23, 2019

Boston Globe | By Katherine Baicker and Amitabh Chandra. Amitabh Chandra is the Ethel Zimmerman Wiener Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the Henry and Allison McCance Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Katherine Baicker is Dean of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.



Mobility: Real and Perceived

December 31, 2019

City Journal | By Alberto Alesina and Stefanie Stantcheva. Americans continue to regard their economic prospects more optimistically than Europeans, who fear that the poor are stuck in poverty. Alesina is the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard. Stantcheva is a Professor of Economics.



Is Lead Exposure a Form of Housing Inequality?

January 2, 2020

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.



My New Year’s resolution? I want to help renovate economic theory.

December 26, 2019

Washington Post | By Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor.



Marcella Alsan receives Arrow Award for "Tuskegee and the Health of Black Men"

January 3, 2020

Awardee | Harvard Kennedy School Professor Marcella Alsan and co-author Marianne Wanamaker of the University of Tennesee accepted the 27th Kenneth J. Arrow Award for best paper in health economics at this week's Allied Social Sciences Association meetings in San Diego. The award, given by International Health Economics Association, recognized their paper, "Tuskegee and the Health of Black Men," published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2018.

"The Arrow Award Committee is proud to acknowledge the authors of this innovative and informative paper, which examines the extent to which the infamous Tuskegee Study of untreated syphilis in black males reduced trust in the medical system and ultimately impeded the progress in reducing mortality for this group...The results provide robust evidence that disclosure of the Tuskegee Study undermined trust in the medical system with the strongest effects for those black males for whom the study was most salient. This led to reductions in the use of medical care and increases in mortality for the most affected group. Specifically, the estimates imply that life expectancy for 45-year old black men fell by up to 1.5 years, an amount sufficient to explain approximately one-third of the racial gap in life expectancy in 1980. We congratulate the authors on the publication of this important paper."

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Could College Be Free?

February 1, 2020

Harvard Magazine | In 2016, the United States spent $91 billion subsidizing access to higher education. According to David Deming, that spending isn’t as progressive or effective as it could be. Deming's proposal: redirect current spending to make public colleges tuition-free, instead of subsidizing higher education in other, roundabout ways. Deming, Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, is a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Graduate School of Education.



The Robots are Coming. Prepare for Trouble.

January 30, 2020

The New York Times | By David Deming, Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Artificial intelligence won’t eliminate every retail job, but the future could be grim unless we start planning now.



Can populist economics coexist with pro-immigrant policies?

January 15, 2020

Vox | A new study by professors Alberto Alesina and Stefanie Stantcheva of Harvard Economics finds that misperceptions about immigration are widespread, and mostly serve to reduce support for redistributive programs. The paper is part of a broader project in which Alesina and Stantcheva use large-scale online surveys to measure how voters’ support for redistributive policies are shaped by perceptions around immigration, social mobility, and other factors.

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Diversity, Immigration and Redistibution ►
Immigration and Redistribution ►


Also cited: A recent paper by Inequality & Social Policy PhD alumni Charlotte Cavaillé and John Marshall in the American Political Science Review, who found that the introduction of mandatory schooling laws in Europe causally reduced opposition to immigration. Cavaillé (PhD in Government and Social Policy, 2014) is a visiting fellow at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Democratic Politics (2019-2020) and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy. Marshall (PhD in Government, 2016) is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University.

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Even the Facts are Polarized

February 3, 2020

The Indicator | Professor of Economics Stefanie Stantcheva joins The Indicator from Planet Money to talk about her research on the "Polarization of Reality." [audio + transcript]

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