Our PhD in Public Policy (PPOL) doctoral students are registered at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 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.
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
Economics of education, development economics, 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.
Frina Lin
Applied microeconomics with a focus on health, development, and labor.
Sylvia Lin
Health care operations research, stochastic decision making, and operations management.
Jiahua Liu
International trade, industrial organization, and development economics.
Rene Livas
Trade, labor economics, and development.
Kristen McCormack
Applied microeconomics with a focus on environmental, health, and public economics.
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.
J. Mintzmyer
Global trade flows and related security policies.
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.
Kadeem Noray
Applied microeconomics, economics of crime, and economic history.
Savannah Noray
Labor markets, especially as they relate to immigration and female labor supply.
Dayea Oh
Labor economics and public economics with a focus on peer effects and productivity at the workplace.
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 with a focus on discrimination and criminal justice. Interested in how policy reforms affect systemic inequality in the United States.
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.
Lauren Russell
Labor economics and public finance with a focus on the intersections of poverty, race, inequality, and gender. Interested specifically in neighborhood sorting, neighborhood effects, and U.S. housing policy.
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, behavioral public policy, and development. Interested in the role of political and economic beliefs.
Kartik Srivastava
Development economics, labor economics, and political economy.
Samuel Stemper
Applied microeconomics, labor economics, and economics of education.
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.
Amy Wickett
Public and labor economics with a focus on criminal justice and inequality.
Joe Winkelmann
Economics of inequality, education, and labor markets.
Katie Zhang
Environmental, urban, and development economics