Spring 2015

Sendhil Mullainathan, P rofessor of Economics, Harvard University. There is a class of policy problems that require predictive tools, rather than causal tools to solve. As such as they are ideal for machine learning applications. I will illustrate with...

Stefanie Stantcheva, Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows. Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard University (beginning July 2016). The quest for a well-designed tax system weighs the need raise revenue and redistribute income more fairly against...

David Brady, Director of Inequality and Social Policy Department, WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Scholars have long focused on the risks of poverty, defined as individual-level labor market and family characteristics more common among the poor than the...

Elizabeth Levy-Paluck, Associate Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs, Princeton University. This seminar will present the results of an harassment, intimidation, and bullying (HIB) prevention and school climate improvement initiative carried out in...

Matthew Desmond, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Studies, Harvard University. Owing to rising housing costs, stagnant or falling incomes among the poor, and a shortfall of federal housing assistance, most poor renting families today devote...

Elizabeth Hinton, Assistant Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University. Fifty years ago this month, President Lyndon B. Johnson called for a “War on Crime,” a declaration that ushered in a new era of American law...

Felix Warneken, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, and Joy Foundation Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Schedule change: Please note that this speaker is a new addition to...

Jeffrey B. Liebman, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. In order to better understand how governments can foster social innovation and improve the results they obtain with their social spending, we, through the Harvard...

Robert D. Putnam, Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University. Robert Putnam's talk will draw from his forthcoming book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, scheduled for release by Simon and Schuster on or around March 10...

Tyler VanderWeele, Professor of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. We consider several possible interpretations of the “effect of race” when regressions are run with race as an exposure variable, controlling also for various...