David Deming Photo
Academic Dean
Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy, HKS; Professor of Education and Economics, HGSE
Assistant: Kelsey Heroux
617-496-2874

David Deming is the Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy and the Academic Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also the Faculty Dean of Kirkland House at Harvard College and a Research Associate at NBER.

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 also writes occasional columns for the New York Times Economic View, which you can find linked on his personal website daviddeming.com

Transparent Engagement 

Harvard Kennedy School is proud of its energetic involvement in the world. To better understand how to solve public problems by improving policy and leadership, we engage directly with policymakers, public leaders, governments, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit businesses whose activities affect those problems. However, we recognize that such engagement can raise questions about perceived and potential conflicts of interest, so we disclose publicly the key professional activities of our faculty outside the Kennedy School. The activities disclosed below are for the most recent reporting period, as defined by University policy. Some may be paid, some may be unpaid, and others may be in exchange for expense reimbursement only.

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

Contact

Phone: 617-495-4370
Assistant: Kelsey Heroux

Expertise

Social Policy
Fairness & Justice
Education, Training & Labor
Poverty, Inequality & Opportunity

Mailing Address

Harvard Kennedy School
79 John F. Kennedy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138