People :: Empowerment Lab at CID :: Research :: Center for International Development at Harvard University

The Empowerment Lab at CID

People

Steering Committee

Ricardo Hausmann is Director of Harvard's Center for International Development and Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the Kennedy School of Government. Previously, he served as the first Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (1994-2000), where he created the Research Department. He has served as Minister of Planning of Venezuela (1992-1993) and as a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela. He also served as Chair of the IMF-World Bank Development Committee. His research interests include issues of growth, macroeconomic stability, international finance, and the social dimensions of development. He holds a PhD in economics from Cornell University. [E-mail | Homepage]

Nava Ashraf is an Assistant Professor in the Negotiations, Organizations, and Markets Unit at Harvard Business School. Her research focuses on how people make decisions, applying principles from economics and psychology to design more effective development interventions. She has conducted randomized evaluations of savings innovations in the Philippines, an agricultural marketing intervention in Kenya, and is currently working on a randomized evaluation of socially-marketed health products in Zambia. Professor Ashraf received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 2005, and her BA in Economics and International Relations from Stanford University. [E-mail | Homepage]

Shawn Cole is an assistant professor in the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School, where he currently teaches the first half of the required finance course in the MBA program. His research examines corporate finance, banking, and consumer finance in developing countries, covering topics such as bank competition, government regulation, and household investment decisions. He has conducted randomized evaluations in education and financial literacy, as well as evaluations of market-based products to help farmers manage risk. [E-mail | Homepage]

Erica Field is an Assistant Professor the Department of Economics at Harvard University. Prior to joining the Department of Economics in 2005, she worked at The Institute for Quantitative Social Science as a Cohort X Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research. Erica's primary fields of interest are development and labor economics, with a regional focus on Latin America. Her past research has examined the household welfare effects of urban land titling programs in developing countries, including the impact of tenure security on labor supply, credit access and fertility. Her current research examines the link between health investments and economic mobility. [E-mail | Homepage]

Sendhil Mullainathan is a Professor the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He is a co-founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, Research Associate/Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER), on the board of directors of the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis and Development (BREAD). His areas of research are development economics, behavioral economics, corporate finance, and applied microeconomics. He has studied the setting of wages, executive compensation, racial discrimination in the labor market, public policy and social structure in developing nations, and behavioral economics of the poor. [E-mail | Homepage]

Rohini Pande is Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy. Prior to joining the Kennedy School she was an Associate Professor of Economics at Yale University. She has taught at Yale University, MIT, and Columbia. Her research focuses on the economic analysis of the politics and consequences of different forms of redistribution, principally in developing countries. A Rhodes Scholar, she is the recipient of several NSF grants, the Russell Sage Presidential Award (with Lena Edlund), and the Royal Economic Society Junior Research Fellowship. She holds a PhD and M.Sc in Economics from the London School of Economics, an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford, and a BA in Economics from St. Stephens College, Delhi University. [E-mail | Homepage]

Leadership

Marcela Escobari is the Executive Director of Harvard's Center for International Development. She has over a decade of experience in economic development, including work with industrial strategy, technology policy and private sector development. Before joining the Center for International Development as Executive Director in November 2007, Marcela led the Americas region and served on the Executive Committee of OTF Group, a strategy consulting firm that advises private and public sector leaders on how to improve export competitiveness. Marcela grew up in Bolivia, holds a B.A. in Economics from Swarthmore College and a Masters in Public Policy (MPP) from the Harvard Kennedy School. [E-mail | Homepage]

Jennifer Gala is the Program Manager for the Empowerment and Growth Labs and oversees student programs and events at Harvard's Center for International Development. Jennifer has been at the Kennedy School for over ten years working previously as program director in Executive Education. Her previous portfolio included: Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century; the Lee Kuan Yew Fellows Program; Financial Institutions for Private Enterprise Development; and Comparative Tax Policy and Administration. Jennifer earned her bachelor's degree in Anthropology and History from Purdue University and her masters in International Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. [E-mail | Homepage]

Affiliates

Faculty

Nava Ashraf is an Assistant Professor in the Negotiations, Organizations, and Markets Unit at Harvard Business School.

Filipe Campante is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Shawn Cole is an assistant professor in the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School.

Erica Field is an Assistant Professor the Department of Economics at Harvard University.

Rema Hanna is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Ricardo Hausmann is Director of Harvard's Center for International Development and Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the Kennedy School of Government.

Asim Ijaz Khwaja is Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Michael R. Kremer is the Gates Professor of Developing Societies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University.

Sendhil Mullainathan is a Professor the Department of Economics at Harvard University.

Ramana Nanda is Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School.

Rohini Pande is Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Ryan Sheely is Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.

Fellows

César Hidalgo is a Fellow at the Center for International Development where he works with Professor Ricardo Hausmann. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Notre Dame in 2008 after studying physics at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile between 1998 and 2004. At Notre Dame he was a member of the Center for Complex Network Research (CCNR), led by his Ph.D. advisor professor Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. As a member of CCNR he worked as a visiting researcher at the Center for Cancer Systems Biology at Harvard's Dana Farber Cancer Institute. [E-mail | Homepage]

Bailey Klinger is co-founder and Director of the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab at Harvard's Center for International Development. His research focuses on small-business finance, entrepreneurship, trade, and structural transformation. He has consulted for the World Bank, United Nations, Inter-American Development Bank, and various country governments. He received his Ph.D. in Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. [E-mail | Homepage]

Stefan Hunt is a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics. His research is focused on understanding the importance of the development of formal financial markets in the developing world. His current research looks at the impact of the introduction of futures markets on commodity spot markets, and the effect of financial information for farmers. He graduated from Cambridge University in Experimental Psychology, and spent five years working in financial services across Asia before receiving a master’s at the London School of Economics. [E-mail | Homepage]