Raj Chetty

About

Raj Chetty is the William A. Ackman Professor of Economics at Harvard University and the Director of Opportunity Insights, which uses big data to study the science of economic opportunity: how we can give children from all backgrounds better chances of succeeding?

Research topics

• Economics
• Demographic economics
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Finance
• Accounting
• Economic growth
• Demography
• Law
• Labour economics

Selected publications

• The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Evidence from a New Public Database Built Using Private Sector Data

  2020 · 725 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  We build a publicly available database that tracks economic activity in the U.S. at a granular level in real time using anonymized data from private companies. We report weekly statistics on consumer spending, business revenues, job postings, and employment rates disaggregated by county, sector, and income group. Using the publicly available data, we show how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the economy by analyzing heterogeneity in its impacts across subgroups. High-income individuals reduced spe…

  PublisherDOI

• Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States*

  The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2020 · 372 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract We construct publicly available statistics on parents’ incomes and students’ earnings outcomes for each college in the United States using deidentified data from tax records. These statistics reveal that the degree of parental income segregation across colleges is very high, similar to that across neighborhoods. Differences in postcollege earnings between children from low- and high-income families are much smaller among students who attend the same college than across colleges. College…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2023-07-01 · 104 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Leadership positions in the U.S. are disproportionately held by graduates of a few highly selective private colleges. Could such colleges — which currently have many more students from high-income families than low-income families — increase the socioeconomic diversity of America’s leaders by changing their admissions policies? We use anonymized admissions data from several private and public colleges linked to income tax records and SAT and ACT test scores to study this question. Children from…

  PublisherDOI

• Expanding and diversifying the pool of undergraduates who study economics: Insights from a new introductory course at Harvard

  The Journal of Economic Education · 2020-09-03 · 37 citations

  articleOpen access

  Economics does not attract as broad or diverse a pool of talent as it could. For example, women comprise less than one-third of economics bachelor’s degree recipients, significantly lower than in math or statistics. The authors present a case study of a new introductory economics course that enrolled 400 students, achieved nearly 50–50 gender balance, and was among the highest-rated courses at Harvard. They summarize the course’s content and pedagogy, illustrate how this approach differs from tr…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Measuring Distribution and Mobility of Income and Wealth

  2022-01-01 · 32 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• CAREER: The Welfare Consequences of Social Insurance and Redistributive Taxation: Evidence and Policy Implications

  NSF · $431k · 2007–2014

• Behavioral Responses to Taxation

  NSF · $186k · 2005–2009

Frequent coauthors

• Emmanuel Saez

  251 shared

• John N. Friedman

  John Brown University

  221 shared

• Nicholas Turner

  182 shared

• Danny Yagan

  University of California, Berkeley

  161 shared

• Nathaniel Hendren

  Impact

  101 shared

• Patrick Kline

  58 shared

• Søren Leth‐Petersen

  University of Copenhagen

  23 shared

• Adam Looney

  University of Utah

  22 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  2003

• B.A., Public Policy

  Stanford University

  1998

Awards & honors

• MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship
• John Bates Clark medal

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Andrei Shleiferh-200
• Alberto Alesinah-161
• John Y. Campbellh-132