Faculty & Research

Where ideas meet practice

Harvard Kennedy School is a place where ideas meet practice as scholars and practitioners conduct research on pressing public policy problems and share their insights with students. In addition to research and teaching, our faculty members are actively engaged in the affairs of the world—shaping public policy, advising governments, and helping to run major institutions in the United States and abroad. The learning in our classrooms reflects this reality.

Harvard’s Center for International Development (CID) is the intellectual home of MPA/ID students and faculty members. CID seeks to advance the understanding of development challenges and offer viable solutions to problems of global poverty. Learn more about CID from its director, Professor Asim Khwaja.

Faculty members teaching in the MPA/ID Program come from a range of countries—Argentina, China, Colombia, Cuba, Denmark, India, Italy, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey, the UK, and Venezuela as well as the United States—and varied disciplines (such as economics, political science, and public administration). They are leaders in their fields of scholarship. Their research is changing the ways in which poverty and underdevelopment are analyzed and approached.

What particularly distinguishes MPA/ID faculty members is that they are scholars and practitioners. Over the course of their careers, our faculty members are likely to hold full-time positions in government or international organizations. They also work with:

Countries like Albania, Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Sierra Leone, South Africa, United Arab Emirates
International organizations like the Asian Development Bank, IMF, UN, and the World Bank
Nongovernmental organizations such as Oxfam, Pratham, and the Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa

Learn more about the interests and experiences of some of our core MPA/ID faculty members. These and other scholars and practitioners make our faculty the strongest in the world in this field.

For questions about the MPA/ID Program or to plan a campus visit, please do not contact faculty members. Email our office instead.

MPA/ID Faculty Chair

Dani Rodrik

Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy

617-495-1407

Eliana La Ferrara: An economist looking at the world through a wider lens

The thread running through Professor of Public Policy Eliana La Ferrara's work is an unwillingness to limit herself to traditional microeconomic models where “prices and quantities” overshadow all else and instead pay “attention to psychological, sociological, sometimes anthropological factors that I believe as economists we cannot overlook.” To La Ferrara, a development economist who joined Harvard Kennedy School after two decades at Italy’s prestigious Bocconi University, those factors are not only important, but also what fascinate her most. She spoke about her multidisciplinary approach, her teaching, and her research in a recent Faculty Focus profile.

Eliana La Ferrara is a Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. She is 2nd Vice-President of the Econometric Society and Program Director of Development Economics for the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).

Why This Debt-Ceiling Fight Is Different

In this Project Syndicate article, Professor Jeffrey Frankel explains "as Washington gears up for yet another political showdown over raising the federal debt limit, congressional Republicans are clearly hellbent on letting the US government default on its obligations. Unfortunately, allowing the GOP to drive the US economy off a cliff may be President Joe Biden’s best option right now."

Professor Frankel is James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Forget debt-ceiling drama. There are bigger, likelier problems

Professor Carmen Reinhart spoke to The Harvard Gazette about the prospects for the global economy in the coming year.

Carmen M. Reinhart is the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System. From 2020-2022 she served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at The World Bank Group

Rescuing Economic Growth in Highly Indebted Developing Countries

In this Project Syndicate article, Professor Dani Rodrik, Reza Baqir, and Ishac Diwan warn that "this year may prove devastating for the developing world, as more and more countries find themselves engulfed in debt crises. Several (Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Russia, Suriname, and Zambia) are already in default, and scores of others urgently need debt relief to ward off economic collapse and sharp rises in poverty."

Professor Rodrik co-teaches the MPA/ID first-year core course Economic Development: Theory and Evidence (DEV-101).

Reza Baqir is a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government.

Ishac Diwan is Research Director at the Finance for Development Lab.