Raj Chetty returning to Harvard
Economist Raj Chetty, whose work has illuminated the decline of American economic mobility, the impact of race on a child’s economic prospects, and other cracks in the American dream, is returning to Harvard after three years at Stanford University. From 2009 to 2015, Chetty served on Harvard’s economics faculty, first as professor of economics and then as William Henry Bloomberg Professor of Economics. He is widely viewed as one of his generation’s most promising young economists, one who has taken advantage of recent advances in computing and statistical methodology to leverage big data and provide new perspectives on one of America’s biggest challenges: economic inequality. At age 29, Chetty was among the youngest to gain tenure at Harvard. His new appointment, as the inaugural William A. Ackman Professor of Economics, will take effect this summer. His work has brought him a number of honors, including in 2012 a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” and...