Development Economics and Public Policy at Georgetown University: A rapid guide to what we do and who we are

Georgetown University (GU) is fast emerging as one of the most exciting places to be if you are interested in development economics and public policy. Here are five reasons why.

1.?The collaborative atmosphere. When people ask me about the Masters programs at GU, they typically think only of the school they are applying to. But our development faculty works together across many schools and it is these cross-departmental collaborations and conversations that create a special atmosphere around development economics.

2. The faculty. From Akerlof to Zeitlin, we are very likely the only development faculty in the world that goes from A to Z! At the bottom of this post, you will find some of the econ/public policy faculty I talk to about research. But they are still a small fraction of the range of expertise that our faculty represents. I love that McCourt is still small enough that we have regular interactions across political scientists, sociologists, and public management specialists.

3. Our students. Our students come from many different places with different lived experiences. Many have previous work experiences; some continue working to support their families and themselves while they are here. Some are fresh out of their undergraduate degrees. And it does not matter—in fact, that diversity is their strength. Whether in the classroom, in discussions later or in events outside, they bring with them a mixture of expertise, humility and grace that is becoming our signature blend.

·???????? Hunger in Appalachia during Covid-19? Ask a student.

·???????? How to set up a huge education program in Khyber Pakhtunwa in Pakistan? Ask a student.

·???????? The problems that arise as courts and the police try to deal with abusive situations for children? Ask a student.

The list goes on—and every part of those lived experiences become food for discussion and a reality check on our teaching and our research.

4. Our events. Development at GU centers around the Gui2de seminar on Thursdays, where invited speakers lead us through their latest research. Followed by the legendary Gui2de tea, where we discuss virtually everything under the sun and listen to our students’ latest ideas. And there is a lot more! From an informal series where speakers present to a small group of students and faculty in talks that can last anywhere up to 4 hours to great speakers coming in to talk to us about virtually everything from climate change to U.S. politics, like most big universities you can fill your day with talks and events. But what makes GU special is precisely that no one is special: From lunch in a room with education ministers and students to a small dinner with top academics, interactions are always deep and always personal.

?5. The culture. Culture in a university is like a country’s health system: No one is happy with it. But here is the truth. Unlike other places I have worked in or know of, faculty and students at GU get an unusually large say in determining what our culture will be. And our proximity to key institutions in Washington D.C., our campus in Doha, and adjunct’ and non-teaching’ faculty who are all luminaries in the policy world, bring multiple viewpoints to the table, leading to deliberations that are both deeply informed and truly thoughtful.

I wish I could also say that these are days of unbridled enthusiasm, stability, funding, and a mandate for positive change. Clearly, they are not. These are days of turmoil and uncertainty. But uncertainty and turmoil have always provided the pre-conditions for critical innovation and this time will be no different. I am not sure what will be produced, but I can tell you for sure that it will not be a cuckoo clock.

Of course, the process through which something new will emerge will not be easy. Of course, it will require constant energy, renewal, and sheer stubbornness in the face of terrible odds. And NONE of this can happen without our students coming together and fighting the craziness that is erupting all around us. But we have both the terrifying responsibility and the exhilarating right to take on that fight.

At the end, it is we who get to decide what tomorrow looks like.

Econ faculty across multiple schools at GU who I talk to regularly about research

(you can look them all up in Google)

·? George Akerlof. [U.S.] You know him. He won a Nobel Prize.

· Raphael Calel. [Sweden]. An economist and a climate scientist, with recent work looking at whether carbon offsets actually offset carbon—a key question in the literature on how to reduce carbon emissions.

·? Jacobus Cilliers. [South Africa]. A key member of the faculty working on education with deep dives into education systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, from South Africa to Guinea to Tanzania. He also runs the amazingly successful Capstone part of the MIDP program, where students are matched to clients to work on their problems.

·???????? Shanta Devarajan. [Sri Lanka]. Shanta joined GU after a long stint at the World Bank as a Chief Economist in multiple regions and ultimately as the Director of Research. He co-led the 2004 World Development Report on Service Delivery, and at GU he is the chair of the International Development concentration of the MSFS program at the School of Foreign Studies. Most recently, a co-editor of the Handbook of Aid and Development, along with Raj M Desai and Jen Tobin.

·???????? Cauê Dobbin. [Brazil] Works on education and inequality. His recent paper on online education in Brazil and how it has fundamentally changed the market structure of college education in the country is in a masterclass of its own.

·???????? Nada Eissa. [U.S.] Works on taxation around the world, and behavioral responses to government programs. She is now working both on education as well as tax administration and public finance in East Africa.

·???????? Garance Genicot. [Belgium] One of the top theorists working in development. You all know the paper on aspirations and the new one on how we can measure (upward) mobility using just repeated cross-sectional data. Garance is a force all by her own, and her dedication to students and the field is legendary.

·???????? James Habyarimana. [Uganda]. What hasn’t James worked on? One of the most complete papers on why diversity may lead to lower production of public goods; one of the first trials of text reminders for HIV medication; one of the first trials showing how to reduce road accidents and much more besides. But its not just his work that sets him apart—it is his willingness to spend infinite time with colleagues and students to work through difficult ideas, with a door that is always open.

·???????? William Jack. [U.S.] An expert in public economics, Billy Jack has worked on just about everything. He was one of the first to pick up on the great possibilities of `mobile money.’ Recent work looks at how to get banks to provide credit in a better way and a lot more besides.

·???????? Shareen Joshi. [India]. Shareen worked in Rajasthan, India for a long time and is keenly aware of the fundamental issues that poor people in India face today. Shareen is now working on big data from courts cases in India; some of her most recent work tries to understand the nature of judicial bias by caste and religion.

·???????? Amrita Kundu. [India]. Amrita works on supply chains, technology adoption and small firms in low-income countries. I know her because of her work on batteries in electric vehicles in Bangladesh, and she has fascinating new work on insurance products for small firms facing immense climate risk in countries like the Philippines.

·???????? Anna Maria Mayda. [Italy]. Just about everything you wanted to know about migration. One of the things that puzzles me about the literature on migration is that, at the end, many people cannot migrate just because they cannot get the documents they need. (Some) of Ana Maria’s work is precisely about this question—from looking at how regional trade agreements are increasingly bringing in visa issues to how H-1B restrictions hurt firms, I find every one of her papers fascinating. And that is just a tiny sliver of her research.

·???????? Juan Felipe Ria?o. [Columbia]. Political Economy and economic history. Take a look at his work on bureaucratic nepotism and how it affects the performance of the public sector in Colombia. Even more, his paper on the U.S. “secret” war in Laos and how it permanently lowered GDP—not just because of the bombing but because of unexploded ordinance—is exactly the kind of work that we need to understand the long-term devastation of war.

·???????? Emma Smith. [U.S. Virgin Islands]. Emma just joined Georgetown from Harvard, having won the prestigious Weiss/NEUDC Distinguished Paper Award in 2023. One big strand of her work is on Syrian refugees in Jordan, with papers looking at mental health, housing subsidies and the impacts of Covid-19.

·???????? Andrew Zeitlin. [U.S.] Andy is steadfastly advancing on two fronts: (a) the idea that cash should be used as a benchmark against which the efficacy of other schemes can be compared and (b) HR processes in the public sector with a key focus on teachers. Newer papers benchmark cash against workforce training and child nutrition programs. The big project in Rwanda looks at how to incentivize teachers—one of the biggest questions in every education system today.

Incredible as these faculty are, they are but a small sliver of the broader group of academics who are extremely active in development at GU. From international economists like Nuno Limao and Sharat Ganapati to political scientists like Nejla Asimovic, Ning Leng, Jen Tobin and Bhumi Purohit to public management scholars like Sebastian Jilke to data scientists like Tiago Ventura, we have an extremely broad group of scholars who are engaged in policy problems from just about every conceivable angle.

And that does not even count the faculty directors of our programs, such as Steve Radelet and Franck Wiebe, who were both former Chief Economists at USAID and the MCC respectively. Franck, who I interact with closely on the MIDP program at McCourt, is there for every Gui2de seminar and organizes the Vibrant Campus initiative, which brings top academics and leaders in development to McCourt for public talks.