Research Newsletter

Featured Research

Top Visual Insights of 2021

The Growth Lab has over 50 faculty, fellows, research assistants, and staff working on development challenges in more than a dozen countries worldwide. Across our multi-disciplinary team, the Growth Lab conducts academic research on the nature of growth as economies build new capabilities, engages in place-based applied research to understand local context-specific growth problems, teaches cutting-edge frameworks to empower current and future policymakers, and builds tools to provide high-definition information for public use. Here are some visual highlights from our research in 2021 .

Namibia's Industry Targeting Dashboard

The Growth Lab has been working with the Government of Namibia since 2020 to disentangle the factors that inform Namibia’s economic prospects. Our project work includes diagnosing the constraints to growth and identifying structural barriers preventing Namibia from diversification opportunities, studying inequality and labor market dynamics across the country, and analyzing economic and structural transformation opportunities.

The Growth Lab launched a custom-made industry targeting tool , which allows users to explore the viability and benefit of any product or industry in comparison with Namibia’s current productive capabilities and comparative advantages. The tool can be accessed by any entity – government, non-government, individual, or otherwise – to understand the opportunities to diversify the economic structure of Namibia, to identify avenues to pursue investment promotion activities, and to accelerate the pathways for developing complementary engines of growth.

Diagnosing Human Capital as a Binding Constraint to Growth

The empirical literature on the contributions of human capital investments to economic growth shows mixed results. While evidence from OECD countries demonstrates that human capital accumulation is associated with growth in per capita income levels, the substantial efforts of developing countries to improve access to and quality of education, as a means for skill accumulation, did not translate into higher income per capita. In this publication, Miguel Angel Santos and Farah Hani propose a framework, building on the principles of Growth Diagnostics, to enable practitioners to determine whether human capital investments are a priority for a country’s economic growth strategy. They discuss and exemplify different tests to diagnose human capital in a place, drawing on the Growth Lab’s experience in different development contexts, and discuss various policy options to address skill shortages.

Additional Research

Estimating the drivers of urban economic complexity and their connection to economic performance

Royal Society Open Science
Andres Gomez-Lievano, et al

What Economic Complexity Theory Can Tell Us about the EU’s Pandemic Recovery and Resilience Plans

Growth Lab/European Politics and Policy
Ricardo Hausmann, Miguel Angel Santos, et al

Colombian Diaspora Survey Results Dashboard

Project: The Role of the Diaspora in the Internationalization of the Colombian Economy
Ljubica Nedelkoska, et al

World map with circles representing cities

PODCAST

Data-Smart City Pod: Economic Growth through the Adjacent Possible

In this conversation with Steve Goldsmith, Director of the Innovations in American Government Program at HKS, Growth Lab Director Ricardo Hausmann discusses the new Metroverse tool, a powerful yet easy-to-use data visualization of urban economies across the globe. They discuss data-driven policymaking, diversification in metropolitan areas, and how mayors can leave their city better than they inherited it.

In the News

Green Growth at the End of the Flat World

Ricardo Hausmann for Project Syndicate

The non-zero costs of zero-covid

Ricardo Hausmann, Frank Neffke, Michele Coscia and business travel research in The Economist

HKS faculty examine why the Afghan government fell and suggest pathways to stability

Ricardo Hausmann

Vietnam’s Factories Are Open Again. Where Are the Workers?

Atlas of Economic Complexity in Bloomberg Businessweek

Economic Growth Depends On The Flow Of People And Ideas

Ricardo Hausmann, Economic Complexity referenced in Forbes

Brasil cai em rankings mundiais de corrupção,democracia, violência e produtividade

Tim Cheston, Atlas of Economic Complexity in Folha de S.Paulo

Executive Education

Leading Economic Growth (Online) 2022

In this ten-week online program , you will have the opportunity to apply our cutting-edge research concepts, frameworks, and tools to the economic growth challenge that you are addressing in your city, region, or country. Whether you are working in the private or nonprofit sectors, in government, or for a multilateral organization - this course is for you.

Session Dates: Feb. 28 - May 6, 2022
Application Deadline : Feb. 7, 2022

Learn More