New Answers to Old Problems

What are the determinants of economic growth and its social, political, and environmental sustainability? What are the constraints to economic growth, and why do some countries achieve sustained growth while others remain stagnant?

These are just some of the questions concerning Harvard’s Center for International Development (CID) Growth Lab. The lab brings together academics and policymakers from around the world to further understand the economic growth process and how policies affect this process. Through its Working Paper Series, conferences, and the development of improved economic diagnostic tools, the CID Growth Lab offers academics the opportunity to work with policymakers from inside and outside the laboratory. Projects are currently under way in South Africa, Kazakhstan, and Morocco, as well as many South American countries.

Ricardo Hausmann, who codirects the center with Dani Rodrik, professor of international political economy at the Kennedy School, and Philippe Aghion, professor of economics at Harvard, says, “One of the advantages of the Growth Lab is that we are forcing faculty to interact in ways they would not have interacted otherwise, and they love it.”