New, creative research on urgent public policy problems happens here at Harvard Kennedy School.

Faculty members who are leaders in their scholarly fields advise our PEG students.  The core faculty who advise PEG students are based in the Department of Economics and the Department of Government, as well as here at Harvard Kennedy School.  

PEG students have a wide array of interests.  Students admitted to the economics track focus their research on political economy in some of the following research areas: environmental and natural resource issues; international development; and international trade.  Alternatively, PEG students admitted to the political track are interested in political economy focusing on but not limited to: comparative politics; international development; and voting behaviors.

Learn more about the interests and experiences of some of our core PhD faculty members.

Behind the Book with Professor of Public Policy Maya Sen and Assistant Professor of Government Matthew Blackwell

Despite dramatic social transformations in the United States during the last 150 years, the South has remained staunchly conservative. Southerners are more likely to support Republican candidates, gun rights, and the death penalty, and southern whites harbor higher levels of racial resentment than whites in other parts of the country. Why haven’t these sentiments evolved or changed? Professor of Public Policy Maya Sen and Assistant Professor of Government at Harvard University Matthew Blackwell explore. 

Reassessing the Gender Wage Gap

Claudia Goldin, the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University, investigates what causes the gender wage gap, and what doesn't. Goldin has a less popular idea: that the pay gap arises not because men and women are paid differently for the same work, but because the labor market incentivizes them to work differently.