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The 2020 IZA Prize in Labor Economics goes to Lawrence Katz

January 16, 2020

IZA - Institute of Labor Economics | Lawrence F. Katz, the Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics at Harvard, will receive the 2020 IZA Prize in Labor Economics for his 35 years of research documenting changes in earnings inequality and showing the role of the expansion of educational opportunity in increasing living standards. The IZA Prize is regarded as the most prestigious science award in the field. 

“Lawrence Katz is universally recognized in the world of economics as a remarkably imaginative and productive scholar, who combines profound economic research with an interest in current basic and specific issues of public policy. Most important, the same recognition is given to his decency in dealing with other economists, especially junior researchers," read the award statement.

Lawrence Katz has advised more than 200 Harvard PhD students to date—among them, over 40 faculty and alumni of the Inequality & Social Policy program.

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‘I Want to See You Here’: How to Make College a Better Bet for More People

February 27, 2020

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Anthony Abraham Jack (PhD 2016), Assistant Professor of Education at Harvard and the author of The Privileged Poor, joins a discussion with a campus leader, a public official, and a college counselor to explore how to lift more people's prospects. Read and watch excerpts from their conversation. Part of The Chronicle series, Broken Ladder, examining the role of education in social mobility.



Asad L. Asad awarded RSF Presidential Authority grant

February 18, 2020

Russell Sage Foundation | Asad L. Asad PhD 2017 has been awarded a Russell Sage Foundation Presidential Authority grant for a study titled, "Precarious Citizenship: Judicial Decisions in U.S. Denaturalization Cases." Asad is now Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University.



The Disappearing Corporate Income Tax

February 11, 2020

Congressional testimony | Jason Furman, Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on "The Disappearing Corporate Income Tax." Read his prepared testimony (via PIIE).



How to Create Growth While Raising Revenue: Reforming the Corporate Tax Code

January 28, 2020

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.

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Advice to students: Don’t be afraid to ask for help

March 6, 2020

Harvard Gazette | "At 11:43 a.m. on Aug. 10, 2015, I sent an email. And it changed my life." Anthony Abraham Jack argues we need to recast what it means to ask for help--not a sign of weakness, but a skill to be honed. Jack is Assistant Professor of Education and a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.



Women in Research: Interview with Michèle Lamont

March 8, 2020

Wiley | In recognition of International Women's Day, Wiley is celebrating the resounding impact women in research have had on the advancement of their disciplines. It sat down with Harvard's Michèle Lamont, Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and Sociology and African American Studies, to learn more about her story. Her top-cited article: "From ‘having’ to ‘being’: self‐worth and the current crisis of American society," published in the British Journal of Sociology (June 2019).


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Opinion: The Case for a Big Coronavirus Stimulus

March 5, 2020

Wall Street Journal | By Jason Furman, Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. Given the mounting economic risks posed by the spread of the novel coronavirus, Congress should act swiftly to pass a fiscal stimulus that is accelerated, big, comprehensive, and dynamic, Furman argues.



This radically simple tool could solve one of our democracy’s worst problems

March 5, 2020

Fast Company | Political scientists from Harvard and Boston University are using sophisticated mapping algorithms to ensure their solution to gerrymandering is as fair as possible. A look at new work by Assistant Professor Benjamin Schneer and PhD candidate Kevin DeLuca (PEG) at Harvard Kennedy School and Maxwell Palmer of Boston University.

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Up from Polarization

February 26, 2020

Dissent | By Daniel Schlozman PhD 2011,  Joseph and Bertha Bernstein Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and the author of When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History (Princeton University Press, 2015).

Reviewing Ezra Klein's Why We're Polarized, Schlozman writes that it " ultimately fails to account for our deepest divides...As he shifts focus to the dynamics of disagreement, he largely ignores the central conflict in contemporary politics: a particular form of racialized political economy, whose motor is the poisonous entente between racism and the one percent. Start there, and one gets a different picture of the problem, and of potential solutions."

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