Students

A student in the Public Policy doctoral program pursues 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

Martin Abel

Applied microeconomics.  Focus on development economics, labor economics, and behavioral economics.  Particular interest in productivity and matching in labor markets of developing countries.

Maria Cecilia Acevedo

Political economy and the microeconomic foundation of development.  Human capital investment, intra-household and spatial allocation of economic activity and market failures that prevent industry development in low and middle income countries.  Political violence, its causes and economic consequences. 

Samura Atallah

Labor economics, behavioral economics, econometrics, development economics.

Dany Bahar

International knowledge diffusion, using the ability to export as a measure of a country's acquisition of productive tacit knowledge.  Interests of research also lie on private sector development, international economics and development economics.

Jonathan Baker

Environmental and resource economics; institutional economics; water allocation policy.  Specifically interested in economic incentive structures for allocating scarce water supplies. 

Natalie Bau

Applied microeconomics; development economics with an emphasis on education and health; application of industrial organization in micro-development; econometrics.

Syon Bhanot

Applications of behavioral and public economics.  Specific policy areas of interest include: household economic behavior, tax policy, labor decisions, public goods, and development.  Current research interests include exploring the underpinnings of economic models of choice and decision making, and also studying how both policy makers and citizens respond to policy initiatives.   

Adam Breuer

International security and technology; in particular, how technological development affects strategic interactions and vice versa.

Sebastian Bustos

Economics of entrepreneurship and private sector development. Particularly interested in the political economy and decision process of providing public goods.

Gabriel Chan

Economics of technical change and the environment.  Public research, development and demonstration programs in energy technologies; decision-making under uncertainty; climate policy and its effect on energy innovation.

Rohit Chandra

The history, evolution and dynamics of energy markets in South Asia, particularly in India.  Specifically focusing on coal, electricity and natural gas markets, and their supply chains, governance, and distortions.  More broadly, interested in natural resource economics in developing countries and the economic effects of resource extraction on local communities.

Juan Pablo Chauvin

Local and regional economic development, international development, and behavioral economics.  Specifically interested in the determinants of city and regional economic growth and inequality, the role of productive structure in subnational development, the micro-foundations of local investment decisions, and local and regional development policies.

Cuicui Chen

Application of industrial organization and political economy in environment and energy issues; econometrics.  Please also see Cuicui's personal web page

Sarah Cohodes

Economics of education and labor economics.  Please also see Sarah's personal web site.

Will Dobbie

Economics of education and labor economics.  Please also see Will's personal web site. 

Raissa Fabregas Robles Gil

Applied microeconomics, focusing on development economics, labor economics and political economy.  Specifically interested in the role of social capital on economic outcomes, inefficiencies in public service delivery and individual investment choices under uncertainty and risk.

Nilesh Fernando

Development economics, labor economics, and applied econometrics.  Understanding the role of information in explaining technology adoption in agriculture; understanding the structure of labor markets in South Asia and the dynamics of rural-urban migration. Please also see Nilesh's personal web page

Nathan Fleming

Natural resource economics; national and firm policies to secure critical materials; the role of natural resources in national security and as a driver of conflict.

Erin Frey

Organizational behavior; judgment and decision making; behavioral economics; pro-social behavior and motivation; field experiments.

Jeffrey Friedman

Theoretical and empirical foundations of military doctrine and strategy. Please also see Jeff's personal web site.

Todd Gerarden

Applied microeconomics.  Research interests include environmental economics, economics of energy markets, behavioral economics and technology adoption, and labor economics.

Tara Grillos

Participatory processes and sustainable development; collective action, public goods provision and community resource management; institutional and psychological dimensions on decision-making.  

Marie Gryphon

Philosophy and the law, specifically the relationship between law and justice and applied questions in legal ethics.

Sarika Gupta

Political economy and development economics.  Public service delivery, corruption, and rights awareness in emerging democracies, particularly India.  Political participation and socioeconomic behavior of resource scarce households.

Nils Hagerdal

International security, ethnic conflict, and politics of the Middle East.

Tomoko Harigaya

International development and behavioral economics.  Risk attitudes/perceptions and psychological factors in decision-making.

Alicia Harley

Regional and global agri-food systems: assessing water, agriculture and economic policies in terms of their contribution to sustainable food systems.  Impacts of climate change on agriculture  and food security.  Innovation and technology transfer in development.  Interplay of politics and science in policy making.  Regional focus on Middle East, North Africa and India. Please also see Alicia's web site.

Daniel Honig

Impact of organizational structure and staff incentives on individual and organizational performance in public bureaucracies, particularly international development bureaucracies; dynamics of bureaucractic hiring and promotion; impact of institutions (formal and informal) and organizations on inequality and poverty outcomes?

Mahnaz Islam

Economic development. The impact of school inputs on outcomes such as attendance and performance; the efficacy of micro-credit programs; the relationship between health and education; the influence of nutrition and health on labor market outcomes.

Avinash Kishore

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

Joo-A Julia Lee

Behavioral decision research; behavioral economics; organizational behavior and negotiation; behavioral approaches to social justice (ethics and inequality); methods in psychophysiology and neuroendrocrinology.  Please also see Julia's Personal web site

Elizabeth Linos

Public sector reform, innovation in governance, evaluation of social programs, gender, international development.

Andrey Liscovich

Applied microeconomics and experimental economics.

Heidi Liu

Judgment and decision making, particularly as it relates to gender; experimental and behavioral economics and its applications to law and negotiation; labor economics.

Sara Nadel

International Development with a focus on evaluation techniques and political economy models. 

Yusuf Neggers

Political economy and development.  Institutional transparency; legitimacy and persistence of reform; conflict.

Janhavi Nilekani

Sustainable development and energy policies in developing countries, particularly India. 

Oyebola Olabisi

Development economics topics in public finance, education and political economy.

Philip Osafo-Kwako

Development microeconomics, economic history and political economy.

Laura Quinby

Public sector labor markets, particularly at the state and local levels.  Research interests in total compensation; the impact of public sector collective bargaining on wages, benefits, and the size of the workforce; and the political economy of state and local pension and retiree health insurance plans.

Olga Rostapshova

Development and environmental economics; small business development, corruption, public goods, sustainable development, health behavior change, climate change policy. 

Trisha Shrum

Issues of climate change and energy through the lenses of environmental and behavioral economics.  Current research interests include the exploration of a potential bias in the perception of eco-product quality, and the implications of such an eco-product bias for the energy efficiency gap.

Ariel Dora Stern

Applied microeconomics; health care economics; inequality and health in elderly and minority populations; productivity in health care; innovation and technology adoption.  Current research interests include incentives for innovation in the market for medical devices and the economics of medical device and pharmaceutical regulation.  Please also see Ariel's personal web site.

Samuel Stolper

Environment economics and industrial organization.  Environment and development; air and water quality; impacts of climate change; efficiency of energy markets.

Richard Sweeney

Environmental economics, industrial organization, and public finance.  Current research interests include estimating the benefits of energy efficiency programs and the relationship between environmental policy and technological change.

Laurence Tai

U.S. regulatory policy and bureaucratic politics; benefits and costs of transparency in government decision-making; formal political theory, especially principal-agen models.

Yeling Tan

International political economy and global governance.  Particularly interested in the politics of adjustment in China's economic liberalization, and the impact of the rise of China on global economic governance. 

Alexandra Van Geen

Judgment and decision making. Experimental economics, behavioral economics and game theory. Risk aversion. Currently studying the applicability of the assumption that asset integration matters for risk attitude.

Elizabeth Walker

Environment and development economics.  Current research examines contract design for environmental services and agricultural technology adoption in Southern Africa.

Lisa Xu

Private sector development in Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions.  Industrial policy and export diversification.

Clara Zverina

Political economy, international economics and contract theory. Particularly interested in the effect of a country's contractual environment on vertical integration of multinational enterprises and on technological spillovers to local firms. Also interested in social security reform in post-communist countries. Regional focus is Eastern Europe and, in particular, the Czech Republic.