Students

The student in the Public Policy doctoral program pursue a variety of research topics during their time at Harvard.  Below are the current research topics of the Public Policy doctoral candidates.

Current Students and Research Interests

Mohamad Al-Ississ

Economic and political development of the Middle East; the impact of political instability and violence on investor behavior; competition and regulatory policy; regional conflict in the Middle East; public sector reform; private sector driven growth; and sectarian and ethnic strife.

Hunt Allcott

Environmental economics: Technological change in the energy industry and tradable allowance markets. Behavioral economics: Automotive market demand responses to gasoline price volatility. Development economics: Poverty alleviation and social programs in Latin America.

Sharon Barnhardt

Development economics, education of girls and agricultural child laborers, and human rights in India, and empirical research on a private foundation’s education program which is designed to create incentives for public primary schools and communities to improve enrollment, attendance, and learning quality.

Jeffrey Bielicki

Engineering and Complex Systems, Human-Environment Interactions, and Experimental Game Theory. (Personal web site)

Jonathan Borck

Environmental economics and policy, with a focus on international institutions and agreements.

Warigia Bowman

Digital divide issues and urban and rural poverty, telecommunications infrastructure and rural development.

Jennifer Bulkeley

International security, nonproliferation, counter-terrorism, international organizations and alliances.

Chris Carrigan

Firm behavior in the context of the legal environment and government regulation. The litigation process and its impact on competition; the role of contract design in subsequent disputes; and firm decision making with government limits on products and services.

Fotini Christia

Rebuilding of civil society and public institutions as well as the reestablishment of the rule of law in post conflict societies. Dissertation focus will most likely be on Balkan integration into the European Union from a human rights and minority rights perspective.

Tonya Cropper

Evaluating long-term economic and social impact of criminal justice policies on society, particularly the relationship between juvenile delinquency and education, the effectiveness of juvenile intervention and prevention programs, and the educational, economic, and social impact of a mother's incarceration on her children.

Alexander Culiuc

International development and globalization. Specifically, interested in the impact of outward migration and remittances on development: investment in human and physical capital, trade, macroeconomic stability. Regional interests are in transition economies of South-East Europe and the former USSR.

David Deming

Economics of education, early childhood development, human capital and skill formation, labor economics and program evaluation. (Personal web site)

Will Dobbie

Effect of outside incentives on decision-making, particularly in developing countries. Decision theory, development economics, and behavioral economics and how insights from these fields can be incorporated into more effective policy.

Oeindrila Dube

How trade affects the labor market and income distribution of developing countries, looking at the effect of trade on the gender wage gap and the gender employment patterns in these countries. Regional interests in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Allan Friedman

The intersection of information technology, law, and public policy.

Ina Ganguli

Trends in labor mobility and migration, and examine gender earnings differentials, evaluating the impact of government policies and the effects of globalization on wages, employment, and income inequality in developing and transition economies.

Marie Gryphon

Education policy with particular interest in ethical implications of education policy and educational freedom and moral and political theory with a focus on professional ethics and the structure of legal systems.

Kessely Hong

Decision making in the context of recent ethno-religious conflicts, analyzing the decisions and actions of the involved parties from the perspectives of economics (rational choice, game theory), negotiation theory, behavioral decision-making theory, and social psychology.

John Horton

Public sector applications of decision science and contract theory, such as the design of optimal incentives and contracts with the private sector. Especially in applications pertaining to defense and national security.

Brooke Kelsey Jack

Incentives for sustainable community development with a focus on two specific questions. First, how can national and international policies be tailored to local conditions? Second, how can better methods for valuing ecosystem services inform more effective policy?

Felipe Kast

Poverty dynamic and its relation with social policy, particularly the measurement of poverty mobility through panel data and the study of the deep determinants of poverty’s inflows and outflows, the study of institutional arrangements in the labor market (e.g., contracts, insurances) that can reduce income variability among poor households. More general topics of interest: social policy, program evaluation, labor markets, development and regulation.

Avinash Kishore

Energy and environment policy economics for developing countries with a focus on sustainable development in rural areas.

Bailey Klinger

Private sector development, including competitiveness and growth, trade, entrepreneurship, off-the-frontier innovation, and the role of microeconomic interventions in promoting the industrial transformation of developing countries.

Carolyn Kousky

The intersection of public policy, economics, and the environment, particularly in examining these three disciplines as they relate to the development of climate change policy. Recent research has examined the motivations behind the enactment of municipal mitigation policies in terms of the economic theory of free-riding.

Victoria Levin

Poverty and inequality analysis, as well as the redistributive and poverty-reducing impacts of social protection programs, and intrahousehold allocation of social and other transfers, such as pensions and remittances; the impact of social assistance programs on the quality of human capital and on productivity; applying the tools of behavioral economics to social policy problems - for example, decreased subsidization of education and healthcare in transition economies.

Andrey Liscovich

Development economics, political economy, and behavioral economics.

David Lynch

Political economy of institutions, and how citizens in developing countries react to economic policies through these institutions.

Kira Matus

The application of scientific and technical expertise to sustainable development and particularly in the issues of emerging urban centers.

Robyn Meeks

Current research interests include transboundary waters, integrated water resource management, and community resource management.

Holly Ming

The economics of education, immigration, and other issues in the labor market; public assistance programs and incentives; housing and the real estate market; income inequality; and neighborhood poverty.

Suerie Moon

The role of civil society in global economic governance; access to medicines, HIV/AIDS and the pharmaceutical industry; the WTO, globalization and transnational organizing; transparency and accountability in trade negotiations; impact of civil society in combating HIV/AIDS; global social justice campaigns; and legitimacy and governance of NGOs.

Onur Mumcu

Political and economic development of emerging markets, and the analysis of institutional features in Turkey that promote corruption and instability.

Karl Neumar

Tatsuya Nishida

China-related issues from international security to economic reforms, (the potential for China’s democratization) within the context of its economic reforms, as a precursor to political change. Other interests include the impact of an emerging China on regional security, particularly on the Japan-US security alliance.

Philip Osafo-Kwako

Development microeconomics and impact evaluation.

Matthew Ranson

Environmental economics, behavioral economics, and public policy. Research interests include the economic and policy implications of individual decisions that are sub-rational or that are made with limited information--for example, the effects of irrational behaviors on revealed and stated preference estimates of the value of environmental goods.

Gary Reinbold

How children in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are affected by economic, legal, political and social deprivations and inequalities; how public policies can mitigate those harmful effects; poverty, inequality and development; law and development; international human rights law.

Jason Richwine

Combining the fields of government and mathematics; specializing in quantitative methods for analyzing government policy; analyzing the inner workings of the US government by studying the specific dynamics of relationships between policy-making institutions.

Olga Rostapshova

Climate change policy, econometric modeling, electricity and renewable energy, sustainable development and international environmental legislation.

Juan Saavedra

Program evaluation, the economics of education with a focus on school choice, vouchers and the mechanisms through which they operate; economics of higher education and labor market consequences of education policies.

Santitarn Sathirathai

Finance, banking, macroeconomics, and economic development.

Reinier Schliesser

Economic growth and development, international finance in developing economies and natural resource economics.

Judith Scott-Clayton

Policy evaluation (particularly quantitative methods), education policy, and the relationship between empirical research and policymaking, e.g., 1) When designing a program evaluation, when are violations of assumptions mere caveats, and when do they completely invalidate the study? 2) What do high-stakes achievement tests measure, how vulnerable are they to manipulation, and what effect do they have on student learning? 3) What conditions influence whether a piece of empirical research is accepted or ignored in the policy world; and, what conditions facilitate the debunking of previously accepted research?

Sandra Sequeira

Politics of policy reform in Latin America, and how economic research translates into implementable policies for poverty alleviation through political processes.

Elta Smith

Environmental policy, specifically, the integration of science and policy to address increasingly complex environmental problems such as genetic engineering and nuclear waste disposal.

Nicole Szlezak

The intersection between medicine and society, such as questions concerning macroeconomics and health, health policy, science and technology policy and the role of research in advancing health in developing countries, conditions affecting research into neglected diseases such as malaria, and on HIV/AIDS as a public policy issue.

Laurence Tai

Interested in sustainable energy in light of global climate change from an environmental economics perspective; policies for the U.S. electricity industry at the state level, because of the role states currently play in regulating this energy source.

Yuhki Tajima

How various institutions of governance can mitigate violent intrastate conflicts in the short term as well as how they address the underlying causes of conflicts in the medium to long term. Specifically, which forms of governance contribute to peace-building in various contexts, how these institutions are formed and how they can dynamically make the transition from short-term conflict management to sustained peace-building.

Yinglan Tan

The intersection of public policy, innovation and entrepreneurship; interactions between institutions and entrepreneurs, impact of trust on entrepreneurship, the intention-reaction gap between the goals of institutional policies and impact of policies; evolution of organizations and industries and impact on economic activity; and institutional innovation and policy integration for entrepreneurship.

Alfie Ulloa

Economic development and forced institutional and legislative convergence; institutional economics, globalization, development issues, and the impact of international affairs on domestic policy outcomes.

Rui Wang

Institutional innovation and policy integration for eco-balance protection in China, and policy dimensions of ecosystem/biodiversity protection and land use.

Thomas Wei

The interplay of business and government, how government policies, particularly in the area of economic regulation and antitrust, affect firm behavior, and, subsequently, consumer welfare. Other broad areas of interest include the efficiency of labor markets and the economics of education.

Abby Williamson

Evaluation of how public policy and other interventions impact community connections; particularly how responses to changing ethnic/racial demographics in specific communities affect local social capital; and social networks and public policy.

Maoliang Ye

Economic development; public economics; political economy; and labor economics. Specific topics: social security net, central-local government relationship (fiscal, personnel, etc.), institutional background for economic growth and organization behavior/performance, education reform and formal/informal education.

Andres Zahler

The ways in which firms innovate, their determinants and their effect in enhancing productivity and ultimately growth in the long run. Also interested in the role that public policy and different institutional arrangements can have in successfully overcoming the serious information and coordination failures that arise with innovation, particularly in the private sector.

Tristan Zajonc

Development economics; labor economics; foreign aid policy and aid effectiveness; and education in Pakistan.