David Deming is the Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School. He is also the Faculty Dean of Kirkland House at Harvard College and a Research Associate at NBER. From 2021 to 2024 he served as the Academic Dean of HKS.
His research focuses on higher education, economic inequality, skills, technology, and the future of the labor market. He is a Principal Investigator (along with Raj Chetty and John Friedman) at the CLIMB Initiative, an organization that seeks to study and improve the role of higher education in social mobility. He is also a faculty lead of the Project on Workforce, a cross-Harvard initiative that focuses on building better pathways to economic mobility through the school-to-work transition. He recently co-founded (with Ben Weidmann) the Skills Lab, which creates performance-based measures of “soft” skills such as teamwork and decision-making.
In 2022 he won the Sherwin Rosen Prize for outstanding contributions to Labor Economics. In 2018 he was awarded the David N. Kershaw Prize for distinguished contributions to the field of public policy and management under the age of 40. He served as a Coeditor of the AEJ: Applied from 2018 to 2021. He writes occasional columns in The Atlantic and previously for the New York Times Economic View, as well as on his Substack newsletter Forked Lightning. You can find his research and other details on his personal website.
Book Chapters
HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series
Research Papers/Reports
Sponsored projects include research, training, convening, and other initiatives externally funded through grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements. Funding sources can include the US federal government, state and local agencies, private foundations, corporations, and foreign entities (public and private).
The below list includes all sponsored projects in progress or completed within the current and past 2 calendar years, administered at the Harvard Kennedy School under the direction of the named faculty member as Principal Investigator. Please note that this list includes only those activities supported by external sponsored funding; other sources of support are not included (e.g., philanthropy, HKS or Harvard internal resources).
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Sponsor Name
Award Date
Transparent Engagement
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Outside Professional Activities For David Deming
| Organization | Relationship |
|---|---|
| Bureau of Labor Statistics | Membership on a scientific or other advisory board |
| National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) | Research or teaching appointment |
| The Atlantic Philanthropies | Paid media appearance (may include written, audio, video, or other digital format) |