The Faculty Advisory Council is a Harvard-wide senior faculty group that provides feedback and guidance to CID as we continue to grow and support development at Harvard and beyond.

Marcella Alsan headshot.

Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School

Marcella Alsan is a Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Alsan received a BA from Harvard University, a master’s in public health from Harvard School of Public Health, a MD from Loyola University, and a PhD in Economics from Harvard University. Alsan trained at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Hiatt Global Health Equity Residency Fellowship – then combined the PhD with an Infectious Disease Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. Prior to returning to Harvard she was on faculty at Stanford. She is an applied microeconomist studying health inequality. 

Some recent papers include “Does Diversity Matter for Health: Experimental Evidence from Oakland” and “Tuskegee and the Health of Black Men” – published in the American Economic Review and The Quarterly Journal of Economics, respectively, and a series of papers on messaging during COVID-19 published in medical and public health outlets. She is currently on the Board of Editors for Science Magazine, Co-Editor of the Journal of Health Economics and Co-Chair of the Health Care Delivery Initiative of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab based out of MIT. She is the co-recipient of the 2019 Arrow Award for Best Paper in Health Economics and the 2021 William G. Manning Memorial Award for the Best Research in Health Econometrics. She is Co-Chair of the Economics of Health Equity Interest Group at the American Society of Health Economists.

Matt Andrews headshot

Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development

Matt Andrews is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy. His research focuses on public sector reform, particularly budgeting and financial management reform, and participatory governance  in  developing and transitional governments. Recent articles focus on forging a theoretical understanding of the nontechnical factors influencing success in reform processes. Specific emphasis lies on the informal institutional context of reform, as well as leadership structures within government-wide networks. This research developed out of his work in the provincial government of Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa and more recently from his tenure as a Public Sector Specialist working in the Europe and Central Asia Region of the World Bank. He brings this experience to courses on public management and development. He holds a BCom (Hons) degree from the University of Natal, Durban (South Africa), an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD in Public Administration from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

Emily Breza headshot

Frederic E. Abbe Professor of Economics

Emily Breza is the Frederic E. Abbe Professor of Economics at Harvard University.  Professor Breza works on development economics, with a focus on financial markets, labor markets, and social networks. She is a board member and finance co-chair of JPAL and an affiliate of NBER, IGC, BREAD, CEPR and Y-RISE. 

Marcia Castro headshot

Andelot Professor of Demography

Marcia Castro is a founding member of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital’s Scientific Advisory Board. At Harvard, Castro serves as a member of the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Brazil Studies Program, a member of the Brazil Studies Program Steering Group of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), and a member of the Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA) Steering Committee. Her research focuses on:

  • the identification of social, biological, and environmental risks associated with vector-borne diseases in the tropics
  • modeling determinants of malaria transmission, with particular emphasis on generating evidence for better control strategies
  • expansion of the Brazilian Amazon frontier and the social and environmental impacts of large-scale development projects implemented in the region
  • urbanization and health
  • use of spatial analysis in the Social Sciences
  • population dynamics and mortality models

Castro has applied geographical information systems, remote sensing, and spatial statistics to her research, as well as proposed novel methods in spatial analysis. She has done extensive work in the Brazilian Amazon, and has experience working in Africa. Since 2004, she has been working on the Dar es Salaam Urban Malaria Control Program, promoting the use of environmental management approaches to improve urban health. She is currently working on a project that is measuring health, poverty and place by modeling inequalities in Accra, Ghana using RS and GIS. She is also investigating the use of remotely sensed imagery to predict urban malaria in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Castro is leading a project to assess the malaria poverty vicious cycle, and she started a project to propose a new methodology to assess spatio-temporal trends in a scenario of multiple control interventions. She is also working on the issues of human mobility and asymptomatic malaria infections in the Brazilian Amazon, as well as on the potential impacts of extreme climatic events on malaria transmission in the Amazon.

Shawn Cole headshot.

John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration

Shawn Cole is a professor in the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School, where he teaches and conducts research on financial services, social enterprise, and impact investing.

Much of his research examines corporate and household finance in emerging markets, with a focus on insurance, credit, and savings. He has also done extensive work on financial education in the US and emerging markets. His recent research focuses on designing and delivering advice and education over mobile phones, with an emphasis on agricultural and financial management.

He has worked in China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Vietnam. He is an affiliate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development. He is on the board of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab, as the co-chair for research.

At HBS, he has taught FIN1 and FIN2 in the core curriculum, Business at the Base of the Pyramid, and courses on impact investing, as well various executive education courses. He currently teaches the PhD development sequence in the department of Economics.

Before joining the Harvard Business School, Professor Cole worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the economic research department. He has served on the Boston Federal Reserve's Community Development Research Advisory Council, served as an external advisor to the Gates Foundation, and was the chair of the endowment management committee of the Telluride Association, a non-profit educational organization. He is a cofounder and board chair of a non-profit, Precision Agriculture for Development.

He received a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005, where he was an NSF and Javits Fellow, and an A.B. in Economics and German Literature from Cornell University. His work on insurance earned the 2015 "Shin Research Excellence Award;" in 2015 he was also named given a “Faculty Pioneer Award” from the Aspen Institute.

Melissa Dell headshot.

Professor of Economics

Melissa Dell is Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 2018, she was awarded the Elaine Bennett Research Prize by the American Economic Association, and The Economist named her one of “the decade’s eight best young economists.” Her research focuses on long-run economic development, primarily in Latin America and Asia. She has examined the impacts of weather on economic growth, various questions related to long-run development, and the effects of different military strategies used by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. Dell received her Ph.D. in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012, and a her MPhil in Economics from Oxford University with Distinction in 2007. She completed her AB in Economics at Harvard University in 2005, graduating summa cum laude.

Rafael Di Tella headshot.

William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration 

Rafael received his first degree in Economics in 1990 from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina and a D.Phil in Economics from Oxford University in 1996. After a short stay in Argentina he joined Harvard Business School in July 1997, where he has taught Business History and courses on the business environment in the first year required curriculum, as well as an elective course on Institutions and Macroeconomics in the second year.

Rafael works on political economy, with a focus on institutional development. One strand of work studies measures of happiness and how they can inform government policies on issues that range from the incidence of inequality to the inflation-unemployment tradeoff.

Another part of Rafael's research has concerned itself with the causes of illegal behavior, with applications to corruption and crime. Two recent examples include a paper on media bias and government transfers, and another trying to figure out if offenders released from electronic monitoring have lower recidivism rates than those released from prison.  Finally, an increasingly important area of research for Rafael has focused on the role of beliefs in economic organization, including reversals of pro-market reform and, more generally, why doesn't capitalism flow to poor countries. Rafael’s work has been published in numerous academic journals.

Rema Hanna headshot.

Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South East Asia Studies

Rema Hanna is the Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South-East Asia Studies and Chair of the International Development Area at the Harvard Kennedy School.  She serves as the Faculty Director of Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) at Harvard University’s Center for International Development and is the co-Scientific Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) South East Asia Office in Indonesia.  In addition, Professor Hanna is a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and an affiliate of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD).  

Her research revolves around improving the provision of public services in developing and emerging nations, particularly for the very poor.  She combines economic theory, qualitative field work, extensive data collection, and cutting-edge empirical analysis to offer insights into how governments function and how they can do better.  Part of her work focuses on how to improve overall service delivery, as well as understanding the impacts of corruption, bureaucratic absenteeism, and discrimination against disadvantaged minority groups on delivery outcomes.  She is particularly interested in how governments can improve and strengthen social protection, tax collection, and environmental safety.  

Her work has been published in leading economics journals, such as the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Political Economy, among others.  

In addition to her own research, Professor Hanna currently serves as co-Chair of the editorial board for the Review of Economics and Statistics and previously served as a co-Editor at the Journal of Human Resources.  She is also on the editorial board of VoxDev, a web platform that aims to provide analysis and evidence on a wide range of policy challenges, in a format that is accessible to a wide audience interested in development. 

Prior to joining the Harvard Kennedy School, Hanna was an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at New York University. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a B.S. from Cornell University with Honors and Distinction. 

Ricardo Hausmann headshot.

Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy

Ricardo Hausmann is Director of the Growth Lab at Harvard University's Center for International Development and Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School. Previously, he served as the Director of the Center for International Development (2005-2019). He also served as the first Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (1994-2000), where he created the Research Department. He has served as Minister of Planning of Venezuela (1992-1993) and as a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela. He also served as Chair of the IMF-World Bank Development Committee.

Ricardo was Professor of Economics at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administracion (IESA) (1985-1991) in Caracas, where he founded the Center for Public Policy. His research interests include issues of growth, macroeconomic stability, international finance, and the social dimensions of development. He holds a PhD in economics from Cornell University. Publications, teaching, and additional information can be found on his website.

Dani Rodrik headshot.

Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy

Dani Rodrik is Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He has published widely in the areas of economic development, international economics, and political economy. His current research focuses on employment and economic growth, in both developing and advanced economies. He is the recipient of the inaugural Albert O. Hirschman Prize of the Social Sciences Research Council and of the Leontief Award for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. Professor Rodrik is currently President-Elect of the International Economic Association. His newest book is Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy (2017). He is also the author of Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science (2015), The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy (2011) and One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth (2007).

Professor Rodrik holds a Ph.D. in economics and an MPA from Princeton University, and an A.B. from Harvard College.

Raffaella Sadun headshot.

Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration

Raffaella Sadun is Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. Professor Sadun's research focuses on managerial and organizational drivers of productivity and growth in both the private and public sector. She is among the founders of the World Management Survey and the Executive Time Use Study. She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, the Center for Economic Policy Research and Ariadne Labs. She teaches in the Owner/President Management Program, and is the Faculty Chair for the Strategy Unit Executive Education program. She also serves as Co-editor for Journal of Law, Economics and Organization and Associate Editor for Management Science and Economica. She received the honour of Grande Ufficiale dell'Ordine "Al Merito della Repubblica Italiana" in 2021.