Our PhD in Public Policy (PPOL) doctoral students are registered at the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Harvard Griffin GSAS) and delve into a range of research areas during their time at Harvard.

Our current PPOL students and their areas of interest are listed below.

Adil Ahsan

Development economics and political economy.

Layane Alhorr

Development, labor, and behavioral economics.

Anthony bald

Public economics, child welfare, and education policy.

Sachet Bangia

Development economics, industrial organization, and labor economics.

Marcos Barrozo

Environmental economics and international trade.

Nicole Bassoff 

Science and technology studies (STS).

Ben Berger

Applied econometrics, health care, economics of innovation, and pharmaceutical regulation.

Anwesha Bhattacharya

Development economics and political economy with a focus on gender and governance.

Jake Bradt

Applied microeconomics of climate and the environment. Interested in applying insights from behavioral economics and industrial organization to the study of climate risk and uncertainty.

Tridevi Chakma

Public economics and environmental economics with a focus on the intersection of inequality and the environment

Sarah Chen

Judgment and decision making and social psychology with a particular interest in emotions, health/medical decision making, and behavioral policies. 

Madison Coots

Computational approaches to policy and decision making, criminal justice reform, technology, and national security.

Alice Danon

Labor economics, economics of education, and behavioral economics.

Jack Deschler

The empirics of law and judicial politics.

Matthew Dodier

Applied microeconomics with a focus on development, health, and environmental economics.

Grace Finley

Development economics and industrial organization with a focus on the role of firms in developing economies.

Gabriella Fleischman

Development and health economics with a focus on nutrition and WASH in developing countries, and the relationship between discrimination/identity and health behaviors and outcomes.

Robert French

Public and urban economics with a focus on low-income housing policy and homelessness.

Jun Gao

Environmental economics and urban and spatial economics with a focus on the distributional and efficiency consequences of environmental policy.

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman

Labor economics, behavioral science, and machine learning.

Valentine Gilbert

Labor economics, public economics, and behavioral economics.  

Alice Heath

Public and labor economics. Her research focuses on how social program policy and design impacts children and parents' health, education, and labor market outcomes.

Michael Holcomb

Urban economics, economic history, and mixed methods research.

Matthew Jacob

Public and labor economics with a focus on intergenerational mobility, social capital, and low-income housing.

Micah Kaats

Applied microeconomics with a focus on labor, health, and wellbeing.

Laura Kincaide

Applied microeconomics, political economy, and labor economics.

Roman Klimke

Labor and development economics with a focus on Social Security, in particular the design and evaluation of unemployment insurance systems. Roman’s current research focuses on Germany, but in future work he would like to study labor market institutions in regions with weaker governance, especially the Middle East.

Eleanor Krause

Labor, urban, and environmental economics with applications to spatial inequality, population mobility, and the economics of place. 

Nikhil Kumar

Education, migration and economic development; political economy and state capacity in developing countries; urban and regional economics.

Magdalena Larreboure 

Political economy of social movements and collective action. Representation of women and minorities in the economy and the public sphere.

Lou Lennad

Science and technology studies, bioethics governance, and policy analysis with a current focus on human genetics and neuroscience.

Michelle Li

Environmental economics, climate policy, and labor economics.

Paichen Li

Energy/resource/environmental economics, public economics, and industrial organization, particularly how government programs can help to build efficiency and resilience in the electricity market (production, transmission, distribution, and consumption) and enhance reliability, affordability, and sustainability of power supply.

Sylvia Lin

Health care operations research, stochastic decision making, and operations management.

Rene Livas

Trade, labor economics, and development.

Conor McGlynn

Science and Technology Studies (STS), standard setting, and AI governance. 

Diana McLeod

Behavioral economics, early childhood and family policy, immigration, and inequality.

Joseph Melkonian

Development economics and immigration.

Molly Moore

Judgment and decision making and experimental economics. Specifically, she is interested in how reputational benefits and costs impact decision making in the domains of political polarization and gender.

Avinash Moorthy

Labor, public, and behavioral economics, specifically, the impact of information barriers and social capital on inequality, the role of formative experiences in career choice, and mental health in schools.

Laura Morris

Development economics and policy, focusing on health and public economics. Particularly interested in resource allocation and evaluations of social programs.

Yousra Neberai

Development, health, and environmental economics.

Karen Ni

Labor and education economics with particular interest in policy interventions to reduce gender and racial inequalities in higher education.

Savannah Noray 

Labor markets, especially as they relate to immigration and female labor supply.

Guillermo Palacios Diaz

Development economics, public economics, and health economics. Specifically, challenges in health care access and delivery in developing countries.

Yuan Pei 

Development economics, political economy, and behavioral economics.

Rafael Proença

Public economics, political economy, and development. Rafael's research goal is to help developing countries tax and spend money in way that promotes growth and improves income distribution. 

Kelsey Pukelis

Labor economics, public economics, and applied econometrics. Specific interests in how governments can intervene optimally to support work in a changing economy, the design of social welfare and insurance programs, and social determinants of health

Emma Rackstraw

Labor economics. Interested in the decision-making processes of key decision-makers in the U.S. criminal justice system and labor market, as well as how those decisions interact with systemic inequities.  

Pariroo Rattan

Political economy of development and Science and Technology Studies (STS).

Melanie Rucinski

Education and labor economics with a focus on K-12 education policy and teacher labor markets.

Averell Schmidt

International relations, international law, and applied statistics

Hilton Simmet

Science, Technology, and Society (STS) and development economics.

Emma Smith

Development and behavioral economics with interests in forced displacement and social networks.

Max Spohn

Behavioral economics, political behavior, and behavioral public policy. Interested in political and economic beliefs.

Kartik Srivastava

Development economics, labor economics, and political economy.

Chloe Tanaka

Environmental/natural resource economics, labor economics, applied microeconomics, and sustainable development.

Katie Tucker

Homeland security and international conflict, specifically as it relates to terrorism and nuclear weapons.

Jessica Van Meir

Comparative politics and sociology with a regional focus on Latin America. Interested in informal labor, urban politics, social movements, and gender and sexuality.

Nurul Wakhidah

Development, behavioral, and labor economics, particularly in the context of education and the psychology of poverty.

Ke Wang

Judgment and decision making, and social psychology, particularly on emotions and motivations.

Eric Wert

Public and labor economics.

Joe Winkelmann

Economics of inequality, education, and labor markets.

Katie Zhang

Environmental, urban, and development economics