Harvard Kennedy School faculty disseminate their research in working publications and papers that contribute to public knowledge and fuel policy innovation. This list features recent faculty publications, including journal articles, books, edited volumes, research papers, and public testimony.
Faculty Publications
McCarthy, Timothy Patrick. "When the Past is Present: What Slave Narratives Teach Us about Our Greatest Human Desire." Salon. January 18, 2016.
Hanna, Rema, and Benjamin Olken. "Strengthening Safety Nets for the Poor." Jakarta Post, January 12, 2016.
Banerjee, Abhijit, Rema Hanna, Jordan C. Kyle, Benjamin A. Olken, and Sudarno Sumarto. "Contracting Out the Last-Mile of Service Delivery: Subsidized Food Distribution in Indonesia." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP16-001, January 2016.
Hanna, Rema, and Benjamin Olken. "Cash Transfers to Indonesia's Poor Don't Discourage Work." Jakarta Globe, October 31, 2015.
Putnam, Robert D. "A Candid Conversation about Schools, Culture, and the Widening Opportunity Gap in America with Professor Robert D. Putnam." About Campus 20.4 (September 2015): 3-7.
Naik, Nikhil, Scott Duke Kominers, Ramesh Raskar, Edward L. Glaeser, and César A. Hidalgo. "Do People Shape Cities, or Do Cities Shape People? The Co- Evolution of Physical, Social, and Economic Change in Five Major U.S. Cities." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP15-061, October 2015.
Avery, Christopher, and Parag A. Pathak. "The Distributional Consequences of Public School Choice." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP15-053, September 2015.
Wilson, William Julius. "Cashless Society." Review of $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer. New York Times, September 2, 2015: 14-14.
Clark, William C. "London: A Multi-Century Struggle for Sustainable Development in an Urban Environment." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP15-047, August 2015.
Pritchett, Lant, and Martina Viarengo. "Does Public Sector Control Reduce Variance in School Quality?" Education Economics 23.5 (August 2015): 557-576.
Barnhardt, Sharon, Erica Field, and Rohini Pande. "Moving to Opportunity or Isolation? Network Effects of a Randomized Housing Lottery in Urban India." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP15-043, August 2015.
Vanek, Joann, Martha Chen, and Govindan Raveendran. "A Guide to Obtaining Data on Types of Informal Workers in Official Statistics." WIEGO Statistical Brief No. 8, May 2015.
Wilson, William Julius. "New Perspectives on the Declining Significance of Race: A Rejoinder." Ethnic & Racial Studies 38.8 (June 2015): 1278-1284.
Jencks, Christopher. "Did We Lose the War on Poverty?—II." Review of Legacies of the War on Poverty, ed. Martha J. Bailey and Sheldon Danziger. New York Review of Books, 62.7, April 23, 2015: 37-39.
Jencks, Christopher. "The War on Poverty: Was It Lost?" Review of Legacies of the War on Poverty, ed. Martha J. Bailey and Sheldon Danziger. New York Review of Books, 62.6, April 2015: 82-85.
McLanahan, Sara, and Christopher Jencks. "Was Moynihan Right?" Education Next 15.2 (Spring 2015): 16-22.
Putnam, Robert D. Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. Simon & Schuster, 2015.
Wilson, William Julius. "The Travails of Urban Field Research." Review of On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, by Alice Goffman, and This Ain’t Chicago: Race, Class, and Regional Identity in the Post-Soul South, by Zandria F. Robinson. Contemporary Sociology, 43.6, November 2014: 824-828.
Hausmann, Ricardo. "Gender Gap Report 2014." World Economic Forum, November 2014.
Jencks, Christopher. "On America's Front Lines." Review of On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, by Alice Goffman. The New York Review of Books, 61.15, October 9, 2014: 34-36.
Wilson, William Julius. "Marginality, Ethnicity and Penality: A Response to Loïc Wacquant." Ethnic & Racial Studies 37.10 (October 2014): 1712-1718.
Chen, Martha, Roopa Madhav, and Kaplana Sharma. "Legal Reforms for the Self-Employed: Three Urban Cases." The Indian Journal of Industrial Relations 50.1 (July 2014): 133-150.
Frederick, Carl B., Kaisa Snellman, and Robert D. Putnam. "Reply to Gao et al: Racial Composition Does Not Explain Increasing Class Gaps in Obesity." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111.22 (June 2014): 2238-2238.
Levels, Mark, Jaap Dronkers, and Christopher Jencks. "Mind the Gap: Compositional, Cultural and Institutional Explanations for Numeracy Skills Disparities Between Adult Immigrants and Natives in Western Countries." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP14-020, April 2014.
Chen, Martha. "Statistics on the Informal Economy: Definitions, Regional Estimates & Challenges." WIEGO Working Paper (Statistics) No. 2, April 2014.
Chen, Martha. "Informal Economy Monitoring Study Sector Report: Home-Based Workers." Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing, April 2014.
Ferguson, Ronald. "Elements of a 21st Century Movement for Excellence with Equity." Journal of Negro Education 83.2 (Spring 2014): 103-120.
Wilson, William Julius. "More Than Just Race, Being Black and Poor in the Inner City." America’s Growing Inequality The Impact of Poverty and Race. Ed. Chester Hartman. Lexington Books, 2014.
Wilson, William Julius. "De Quel Ghetto The Wire Parle-t-elle?" The Wire, L'Amerique Sur Ecoute. Ed. Marie-Hélène Bacqué. La Découverte, March 2014.
Frederick, Carl B., Kaisa Snellman, and Robert D. Putnam. "Increasing Socioeconomic Disparities in Adolescent Obesity." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111.4 (January 2014): 1338-1342.
Wilson, William Julius. "Being Poor, Black, and American: The Impact of Political, Economic, and Cultural Forces." Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective. Ed. David B. Grusky. Westview Press, January 2014.
Glaeser, Edward L. "Wealth and the Self-Protection Society." In 100 Years: Leading Economists Predict the Future. Ed. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta. MIT Press, 2014.
Chen, Martha. "Women in Informal Employment." Toolkit: Learning and Working in the Informal Economy. Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit, 2014.
Chaddha, Anmol, and William Julius Wilson. "“Way Down in the Hole”: Systemic Urban Inequality and The Wire." Crime and Justice in the City as Seen through The Wire. Ed. Peter A. Collins, and David C. Brody. Carolina Academic Press, 2013, 29-53.
Glaeser, Edward L. "A World of Cities: The Causes and Consequences of Urbanization in Poorer Countries." National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2013.
Glaeser, Edward L., and Abha Joshi-Ghani. "Rethinking Cities: Toward Shared Prosperity." Economic Premise Notes Series: Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) Network, World Bank, October 2013.
Ganong, Peter, and Jeffrey B. Liebman. "The Decline, Rebound, and Further Rise in SNAP Enrollment: Disentangling Business Cycle Fluctuations and Policy Changes." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP13-037, October 2013.
Wilson, William Julius. "Combating Concentrated Poverty in Urban Neighborhoods." Journal of Applied Social Science 7.2 (September 2013): 135-143.
Putnam, Robert D. "Crumbling American Dreams." New York Times, August 3, 2013.
Shaefer, H. Luke and Kathryn Edin. "Rising Extreme Poverty in the United States and the Response of Federal Means-Tested Transfer Programs." Social Service Review 87.2 (June 2013): 250-268.
Wilson, William Julius. "The Urban Jobs Crisis." Harvard Magazine. May-June 2013.
Alatas, Vivi, Abhijit Banerjee, Rema Hanna, Benjamin A. Olken, Ririn Purnamasari, and Matthew Wai-Poi. "Does Elite Capture Matter? Local Elites and Targeted Welfare Programs in Indonesia." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP13-008, April 2013.
Avery, Christopher, Travis St. Clair, Michael Levina, and Kenneth Hill. "The 'Own Children' Fertility Estimation Procedure: A Reappraisal." Population Studies 67.2 (2013): 171-183.
Chen, Martha. "Women and the Informal Economy: Economic Actors and Global Leaders." Women in the Global Economy: Leading Social Change. Ed. Trish Tierney. Institute of International Education Foundation, 2013.
Quane, James M., and William Julius Wilson. "Critical Commentary: Making the Connection Between the Socialisation and the Social Isolation of the Inner-city Poor." Urban Studies 49.14 (November 2012): 2977-2987.
Frankel, Jeffrey A. "Mitt Romney Rejects His Natural Voters." Project Syndicate, September 24, 2012.
Mendenhall, Ruby, Kathryn Edin, Susan Crowley, Jennifer Sykes, Laura Tach, Katrin Kriz, and Jeffrey R. Kling. "The Role of Earned Income Tax Credit in the Budgets of Low-Income Households." Social Service Review 86.3 (September 2012): 367-400.
Wilson, William Julius. "Foreword." Not Meant to Live Like This: Weathering the Storm of Our Lives in New Orleans. ATD Fourth World Movement, 2012.
Wilson, William Julius. "The Role of Elite Institutions." Chronicle of Higher Education. August 2, 2012.
Wilson, William Julius. "The Great Disparity." Reviews of The Great Divergence, by Timothy Noah, and Coming Apart, by Charles Murray. Nation, 295.5/6, July 30, 2012: 27-32.