phd economic harvard

• Harvard Business School →
• Doctoral Programs →
• PhD Programs
• Accounting & Management

Business Economics

• Health Policy (Management)
• Organizational Behavior
• Technology & Operations Management
• Program Requirements

Curriculum & Coursework

Research dissertation, areas of specialization.

• Behavioral Economics
• Development
• Econometrics
• Economic Theory
• Economics of Organization
• Entrepreneurship
• Industrial Organization
• International Economics
• Labor Economics
• Macroeconomics

Fanele Mashwama

Sagar Saxena

“ HBS is the ideal environment because I get to think about the world like an economist, but I have the freedom and resources to draw on methods from other disciplines as I study market design and industrial organization. ”

Current Harvard Economics Faculty

• Pol Antràs
• Robert Barro
• Emily Breza
• John Y. Campbell
• Raj Chetty
• Gabriel Chodorow-Reich
• Richard Cooper
• David M. Cutler
• Melissa Dell
• Karen Dynan
• Benjamin Enke
• Richard B. Freeman
• Benjamin M. Friedman
• Roland G. Fryer, Jr.
• Xavier Gabaix
• Edward Glaeser
• Claudia Goldin
• Benjamin Golub
• Gita Gopinath
• Oliver Hart
• Elhanan Helpman
• Dale Jorgenson
• Myrto Kalouptsidi
• Maximilian Kasy
• Lawrence Katz
• Gabriel Kreindler
• David Laibson
• Robin S. Lee
• N. Gregory Mankiw
• Stephen Marglin
• Eric S. Maskin
• Marc Melitz
• Jeffrey Miron
• Ariel Pakes
• Amanda Pallais
• Matthew Rabin
• Gautam Rao
• Kenneth Rogoff
• Amartya Sen
• Neil Shephard
• Andrei Shleifer
• Stefanie Stantcheva
• Jeremy Stein
• James Stock
• Ludwig Straub
• Tomasz Strzalecki
• Lawrence H. Summers
• Elie Tamer
• Winnie Van Dijk
• David Yang

Current HBS Faculty

• Laura Alfaro
• Samuel B. Antill
• Brian K. Baik
• Malcolm P. Baker
• John Beshears
• Katherine B. Coffman
• Lauren H. Cohen
• Shawn A. Cole
• Joshua D. Coval
• Mihir A. Desai
• Mark L. Egan
• Benjamin C. Esty
• C. Fritz Foley
• Stuart C. Gilson
• Paul A. Gompers
• Jerry R. Green
• Shane M. Greenstein
• Robin Greenwood
• Brian J. Hall
• Samuel G. Hanson
• Victoria Ivashina
• Ebehi Iyoha
• Robert S. Kaplan
• William R. Kerr
• Scott Duke Kominers
• Jacqueline Ng Lane
• Josh Lerner
• Michael Luca
• Alexander J. MacKay
• Edward McFowland III
• David A. Moss
• Ramana Nanda
• Matthew Rabin
• Forest L. Reinhardt
• Edward J. Riedl
• Raffaella Sadun
• William A. Sahlman
• David S. Scharfstein
• Joshua R. Schwartzstein
• Arthur I Segel
• Emil N. Siriwardane
• Ariel D. Stern
• Adi Sunderam
• Boris Vallee
• Luis M. Viceira
• Matthew C. Weinzierl
• Dennis A. Yao

Current Business Economics Students

• Maxim Alekseev
• Martin Aragoneses
• Sage Belz
• Michael Blank
• Fiona Chen
• Jiafeng (Kevin) Chen
• Cameron Cohen
• Jorge Colmenares
• Terry Culpepper
• Songyuan Ding
• Jo Ellery
• Simon Essig Aberg
• Toren Fronsdal
• Jacob Furst
• Jeffrey Gortmaker
• Shlok Goyal
• Helene Hall
• Ruru (Juan Ru) Hoong
• Catherine Huang
• Baiyun Jing
• Nathan Kaplan
• Justin Katz
• Lev Klarnet
• Shira Li
• Angela Ma
• Alex Magnuson
• Fanele Mashwama
• Marcela Mello
• Laura Nicolae
• Lauren Rice
• Maya Roy
• Dominic Russel
• Kunal Sangani
• Claire Shi
• Wilbur Townsend
• Jennifer Walsh
• Andi Wang
• Alex Wu
• Hanbin Yang
• Jeffrey Yang
• Jennifer Zou

Current HBS Faculty & Students by Interest

Recent placement, john conlon, 2023, erica moszkowski, 2023, ran zhuo, 2023, matthew lilley, 2022, david zhang, 2022, karen shen, 2021, ravi jagadeesan, 2020, christopher anderson, 2019, yizhou jin, 2019, william diamond, 2018, neil thakral, 2018, spencer yongwook kwon, 2023, daniel ramos, 2023, francesca bastianello, 2022, frank pinter, 2022, andreas schaab, 2021, edoardo maria acabbi, 2020, michael thaler, 2020, vitaly bord, 2019, weiling liu, 2019, anastassia fedyk, 2018, robert minton, 2023, sagar saxena, 2023, talia b. gillis, 2022, ron yang, 2022, gregor schubert, 2021, xiang ding, 2020, oren danieli, 2019, janelle schlossberger, 2019, yueran ma, 2018.

• Introduction

Harvard Griffin GSAS strives to provide students with timely, accurate, and clear information. If you need help understanding a specific policy, please contact the office that administers that policy.

• Application for Degree
• Credit for Completed Graduate Work
• Ad Hoc Degree Programs
• Dissertations
• English Language Proficiency
• African and African American Studies
• American Studies
• Anthropology
• Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning
• Molecular and Cellular Biology
• Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
• Biological Sciences in Public Health
• Biostatistics
• Business Administration
• Business Economics
• Byzantine Studies
• Celtic Languages and Literatures
• Chemical Biology
• Chemical Physics
• Chemistry and Chemical Biology
• Comparative Literature
• Division of Medical Sciences
• Earth and Planetary Sciences
• East Asian Languages and Civilizations
• Engineering and Applied Sciences
• Film and Visual Studies
• Germanic Languages and Literatures
• Health Policy
• History of Art and Architecture
• History of Science
• Human Evolutionary Biology
• Inner Asian and Altaic Studies
• Linguistics
• Mathematics
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
• Organizational Behavior
• Political Economy and Government
• Population Health Sciences
• Public Policy
• Quantum Science and Engineering
• Religion, The Study of
• Romance Languages and Literatures
• Slavic Languages and Literatures
• Social Policy
• South Asian Studies
• Systems, Synthetic, and Quantitative Biology
• Secondary Fields
• Year of Graduate Study (G-Year)
• Master's Degrees
• Grade and Examination Requirements
• Conduct and Safety
• Financial Aid
• Non-Resident Students
• Registration

Questions about these requirements? See the contact info at the bottom of the page. 

The First Two Years

Regular guidance through contact with faculty advisors is an essential component of doctoral education. Students should maintain close contact with their official advisor(s) throughout their enrollment in the program.  Students are encouraged to develop informal advising relationships with several faculty members in addition to their official advisor.  

The First-year advisor provides assistance during the initial stages of the program, but do not necessarily advise the student throughout their studies. During the second year of the program, students are matched with advisors based on their research interests. As students familiarize themselves with program faculty during coursework, research work, seminars/workshops, and other activities, they may change their official advisor(s) as their academic and research interests develop.  

The following required courses are completed during the first year of the program: Core macro and micro series: Econ2010a, 2010b, 2010c, 2010d; Quantitative Economics: Econ2120 and Econ2140; and the distribution requirement. 

During the G2 year, students designate two fields of interest and complete two approved courses in each of the two fields.  

Year Three and Beyond

As a G3, students enroll in a Research Preparatory course and complete a research paper (Econ3000) under the guidance of their faculty advisor.   

Graduate Student Workshops

Students are required to begin presenting in a Graduate Student Workshop during the Spring semester of the third year. Students continue to attend and present in at least one workshop each semester.  

Graduate students are expected to teach during their careers at Harvard, usually beginning in year three of the program. First-time teaching fellows must participate in at least one Bok Center Teaching Conference. Students in their third and fourth years have priority for teaching fellowship appointments. 

Research Proposal

Students are required to present and submit their research ideas to a committee comprising of at least two faculty members. The committee will provide feedback and decide if the student is making satisfactory progress toward the degree. Students will receive coordinated advice from faculty regarding their progress and be given detailed recommendations for future research plans, particularly with respect to possible job market paper and dissertation.  

The Dissertation

The student selects a faculty dissertation committee consisting of three members of the Harvard faculty; two of whom must be members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Under the dissertation committee’s advisorship, the student will proceed to complete the dissertation research. The dissertation should demonstrate the candidate’s ability to perform original research that develops in a scholarly way and is a significant contribution to the knowledge and understanding in the chosen special field. For the student to meet the requirement, analysis and evaluation of relevant data must yield significant and independent conclusions. 

Contact Info 

Economics Website

Brenda Piquet   Assistant Director, PhD Programs  Department of Economics  Littauer Center 201  Cambridge, MA 02138  [email protected]   617-495-8927

Explore Events

Undergraduate

Economics is a social science that covers a broad subject matter in seeking to understand the social world. Economics studies the behavior of social systems—such as markets, corporations, legislatures, and families—as the outcome of interactions through institutions between goal-directed individuals. Doing economic research involves asking questions about the social world and addressing those questions with data and models, employing mathematical and statistical tools whenever possible to aid the analysis.

The Ph.D. program in the Department of Economics is addressed to students of high promise who wish to prepare themselves for careers in teaching and research in academia or for responsible positions in government, research organizations, or business enterprises. Students in the department are free to pursue research interests with scholars throughout the University. Faculty of Harvard Law School, Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Business School, for example, are available to students for consultation, instruction, and research guidance.

• Utility Menu

Subscribe to our mailing list Subscribe to Robert Stavins' blog Environmental Insights Podcast

Ph.D. Programs

The Harvard Environmental Economics Program (HEEP) does not grant degrees. Rather, students pursue a Ph.D. degree in Economics, Business Economics, Business Administration, Political Economy and Government, Public Policy, or Health Policy. Those whose dissertation interests focus on environmental and natural resource economics are invited to become Pre-Doctoral Fellows of HEEP.

If you are interested in pursuing a Ph.D. degree at Harvard focused on environmental economics, we encourage you to contact one or more of the following doctoral programs directly.

The Economics Ph.D.  program is the most traditional route for students interested in environmental economics. It is recommended for those applicants who wish to pursue an academic career in an economics department. It is one possible path for students who desire academic positions in professional schools or research positions in national or international agencies and research centers. The program is based in Harvard University’s Department of Economics in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. For general information about the Department, see its website . The Doctoral Program—including admissions requirements— is described here .

Business Economics

The Business Economics Ph.D.  program is offered jointly by the Department of Economics , in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Harvard Business School, and combines economic analysis with practical aspects of business. This degree is primarily intended to prepare students for careers in research and teaching in business administration and related fields of economics. The general management approach of the Harvard Business School is an important ingredient in the program. For more information on the Business Economics program and for admissions requirements, please see the  Business Economics website.

Health Policy

The Health Policy Ph.D.  program is co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Kennedy School of Government, the Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard School of Public Health. Students interested in environmental economics should consider the “Economics” track of the program. This program is recommended for students with a particular interest in the intersection of health and environmental policy and who desire academic and/or research careers in health policy. For more information on the Health Policy program and for admissions requirements please see the Health Policy website.

Political Economy and Government

The Political Economy and Government  (PEG) program is co-sponsored by the  Department of Economics and the  Department of Government in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences —and the Harvard Kennedy School . The PEG program is appropriate for the select group of students whose breadth of academic interests is not well served by doctoral studies confined to economics, political science, or public policy. The program is recommended for students whose research interests span the intersection of economics and political science and who desire academic careers in professional schools or research careers with national or international agencies and research centers. For more information on the PEG program and for admissions requirements, please see the program’s web page.  

Public Policy

The Ph.D. in Public Policy  is granted by the  Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and administered by the Harvard Kennedy School . This program is recommended for students who are interested in environmental economics as applied to the policy world and whose career goals include academic careers in professional schools, research positions in national or international agencies and research centers, or professional positions of various kinds in policy organizations. For more information on the Public Policy program and for admissions requirements and materials please see the program’s web site.

• Harvard Courses & Seminars

• Student Outreach
• Research Support
• Executive Education
• News & Announcements
• Jobs & Opportunities
• Annual Reports
• Faculty Working Papers
• Building State Capability
• Colombia Education Initiative
• Evidence for Policy Design
• Reimagining the Economy
• Social Protection Initiative
• Past Programs
• Speaker Series
• Global Empowerment Meeting (GEM)
• NEUDC 2023 Conference

CID Faculty Spotlight: Vincent Pons on Understanding and Upholding Democracy

By Diana King

A native of Strasbourg, political economist, associate professor at Harvard Business School, and CID Faculty Affiliate Vincent Pons had just turned 18, old enough to vote in his first election, when France was rocked by the biggest political shock since the protests of May 1968 ground the economy to a halt. Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right Front National party, had advanced to the second round of the 2002 presidential election, securing the largest lead for the far right in decades. Xenophobic, extremist, and a denier of the Holocaust, Le Pen was the antithesis of French republican ideals.

“My friends and I joked that if Le Pen became President, we would erect barricades and join the Resistance,” Pons recalls. Echoing the spirit of May ‘68, when millions of French students and workers took to the streets, Pons and his friends joined over a million demonstrators to protest Le Pen’s rise to power. 

The mobilization aided incumbent Jacques Chirac’s landslide victory, and delayed the mainstreaming of populism by 15 years. (Le Pen’s daughter and successor, Marine Le Pen, was elected to the second round of French presidential elections in 2017 and 2022.)

For Pons, the 2002 election marked the moment electoral democracy became “an ideal worth studying and fighting for.” He strives in his work to better understand the foundations of democracy in order to impact policy. If, to cite Adam Przeworski, a democracy is fundamentally “a system where parties lose elections,” how do we ensure that elections fulfill their democratic promise – that they are as fair, free, and representative as possible? How can we measure if democratic power transitions lead to policies that actually improve lives? 

To answer these questions, Pons began studying political philosophy, then switched to economics in part due to a transformative experience in Morocco as a research assistant for Esther Duflo, who received the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer for popularizing randomized controlled trials – a method that enables social scientists to test policy outcomes with the rigor of the natural sciences. 

A second historic election inspired Pons to merge his training in field methodology with his fascination for electoral processes. Newly arrived in the U.S. to pursue a PhD in economics at MIT, Pons watched the 2008 Obama campaign with a mix of wonder and scientific curiosity.

“The systematic use of data, the level of organization, the individual-level targeting, the fact that [Obama] was mobilizing voters based on evidence rather than political instinct” were things he had never seen. Curious to test if a similar strategy would work in France, which was experiencing declining voter participation, especially among low-income citizens, Pons and two friends from Strasbourg who were studying at Harvard Kennedy School, Guillaume Liegey and Arthur Muller, conducted an experiment using door-to-door tactics during a regional campaign in the Paris suburbs in 2010. The success of that experiment (voter turnout increased, notably among immigrants, who often lacked information on how to vote) led to their appointment as the national field directors of François Hollande’s 2012 presidential campaign. 

Les Bostoniens, as they were called by the French press, organized 80,000 canvassers to knock on 5 million doors – a tremendous feat that helped Hollande win the election, changed the French campaign landscape, and provided a countrywide dataset for a landmark study: Pons was the first to measure the impact of door-to-door canvassing on voter choice. Canvassing accounted for a quarter of Hollande’s victory margin, suggesting that short conversations can change voter minds .

Over the last 15 years, Pons has been building a fresh portrait of democracy by examining four key elements of elections: the factors influencing voter turnout, the factors shaping voter preferences, the representativeness of election results, and the impact of election outcomes on policies and economic performance. 

His research has led to voter registration reform in France, and via country-specific case studies and analysis of global data, has implications for policy worldwide, including in developing countries where electoral institutions may be fragile or newly established. He has examined, for example, how to increase trust in electoral institutions in Kenya . In a large-scale experiment implemented with Kenya’s Electoral Commission, Pons shows that text messages intended to mobilize voters before the 2013 general elections increased turnout but decreased trust in electoral institutions when administrators failed to deliver on promises of a transparent and orderly process. 

He has also studied how globalization shapes elections and domestic policies in Bolivia, Zambia, and Spain; the impact of moving to a different state on voter behavior in the U.S.; and in the most comprehensive study of its kind, he draws upon global presidential and parliamentary data from 1945, to show that electoral turnovers are good for the economy, especially in non-OECD countries.

“There’s existing work that associates [other aspects of] democracy with good economic performance,” notes Pons. But during electoral turnovers, it could theoretically go either way, bringing instability or improved policy. Pons is the first to empirically demonstrate that turnovers bring economic benefits such as “less inflation, less unemployment, and more trade,” as well as “better governance and less corruption,” partly due to the incoming party’s concern for establishing a good reputation.  Results were slightly larger in developing countries, notes Pons, perhaps because they tend to have “fewer [executive] checks and balances, and thus, more scope for the election outcome to produce impact.”   

On the flipside, when “democracy does not function well, you can see the negative effects – low voter turnout, high abstention that then decreases the legitimacy of the winner and makes it harder for them to effect policy, and creates political risk for companies,” says Pons, who is troubled by today’s high levels of polarization and distrust in political leaders and institutions that has fueled (and in turn is intensified by) the rise of populism.

In the U.S., in particular, he is concerned that “the candidate who lost the last election never recognized his defeat,” and in recent years, candidates have refused to debate, preferring political meetings restricted to members of their party.

“This is concerning because democracy should not just be about counting the strengths of different sides, but also deliberation…[about] people occasionally talking to someone of a different opinion and then changing their mind,” he says.

Companies, Pons believes, have a role to play in upholding democracy from encouraging employees to vote and giving them paid time off on Election Day, to modeling and even offering training on how to respectfully disagree, and understand the origins of their own and others’ perspectives. This is critical, he says, because while friends, families, and neighbors increasingly seem to espouse the same views, “the workplace is one of the few places where we still have discussions with people we respect, but who might have different opinions.”

Harvard Faculty are Breaking Down Barriers for Women and Girls in Developing Countries

By Justin Chin

Explore Articles

By Topic / View all

By Region / View all

Topic / Development and Economic Growth

Interview with Former Prime Minister of Jordan Omar Razzaz: Jordan’s Future

by- Ala'a Kolkaila  |  April 14, 2024

On March 27, 2024, HKS Student Policy Review Senior Editor Ala’a Kolkaila spoke with Omar Razzaz. The coversation focused on a range of topics affecting Jordan and the region.

Omar Razzaz was the Prime Minister of Jordan from 2018 to 2020. Born in Al-Salt, Razzaz began his schooling in Amman, later continuing his studies abroad. He was director of several national and international institutions. He was Minister of Education in Hani Al-Mulki’s government since 2017, before his designation as Prime Minister. Razzaz was enrolled at AUB’s faculty of engineering from 1979 to 1981 and holds a master’s degree in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Razzaz holds a PhD from Harvard University in Planning, with a minor in Economics. He completed his post-doctorate at Harvard Law School.

Razzaz was director of the World Bank in Lebanon between 2002 and 2006. He was director of Jordan’s Social Security Corporation between 2006 and 2010. He also served as director of the Jordan Strategy Forum and Jordan’s Ahli Bank. In 2017, he joined Hani Mulki’s government as Minister of Education in Jordan.

Development and Economic Growth

• Social Policy

About the author

Ala'a kolkaila.

Ala’a Kolkaila, an economist and sustainability expert, has over a decade of experience in various roles, including working for the Egyptian government and international organizations, focusing on sustainability and economic development. Ala’a has served as an advisor to ministers in Egypt, significantly influenced national and regional programs, and developed impactful policies in various sectors. Ala’a earned her MA in Economics from Universität Phillips Marburg, Germany, in 2013. In 2021, she joined MIT School of Management as a visiting fellow and is currently a Mason Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, pursuing her mid-career Masters in Public Administration.

Related Articles

Global governance on impact investing and accounting: a strategy for developing global standards.

April 10, 2024

by- Wataru Osawa

Impact investing can be a game changer in solving social problems. Yet, the lack of impact accounting standards enables investors without any social impact to disguise themselves as “impact investors” to improve the image of the company.

The Cross-Border Interoperability of National Digital Payment Systems as a Gateway to Economic Development

April 09, 2024

by- Arjun Gargeyas

Enhanced coordination and cooperation between governments, financial regulatory bodies, central banks, and other industry stakeholders is needed to implement the vision of integrating national digital payment systems.

Rethinking Local Economic Development: Why Should Local Governments Handle Tax Incentives with Care?

April 06, 2024

by- Yomna Mohei Eldin

Evidence on the spillover effects of tax incentives is mixed and ambiguous while evidence on the impact of tax incentives on revenue loss for public services is clear. It is time for voters and politicians to use tax incentives with care, given their high costs and controversial benefits.

Pathways to Public Service: Aman Panjwani '20

Description

Aman Panjwani is the Chief of Staff at America Achieves, a new type of national organization supporting communities in creating Good Jobs in promising high-growth economic sectors that advance local economic growth and economic mobility using systems-level, data-driven, and scalable strategies. 

Previously, Aman worked in the education space with a seasoned team of advocates to build a non-partisan campaign that shifted the national and local narrative away from attacks on student learning in 2021 and 2022; and leading up to the 2020 presidential campaign and the transfer of executive power on January 6th, Aman focused on educating and protecting federal employees who might find themselves looking to report corruption and abuse of power. 

A recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship to India, Aman graduated from Harvard College in 2020 where he studied economic and education policy and was a proud member of Lowell House.

This event is open to all Harvard undergraduate and graduate students. Please register with a valid Harvard email address.

Accessibility

The IOP encourages persons with disabilities to participate in our programs. If you have questions about accommodations or the physical access provided, please contact 617-495-1360 or [email protected] in advance of the event.

Event Details

RSVP with a valid Harvard email address Date: Monday, April 15, 2024 Time: 5:30pm EST Where: Wexner Building - W-434 AB Register Here

Find More IOP Events