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The Growth Lab's Most Important Academic Papers of the Past Decade on Economic Complexity

This blog post originated as a thread on Twitter. Written by Frank Neffke.

At the Growth Lab, an interdisciplinary team of researchers explores the foundations of economic growth from both an academic and applied angle.

Our Economic Complexity approach starts from the assumption that technology takes the form of tools, codes and knowhow. Because each individual can only acquire so much knowhow in a lifetime, a country’s collective knowhow grows by distributing different bits...

15 Visual Insights from the Growth Lab in 2020

The Growth Lab has over 50 faculty, fellows, research assistants, and staff working on development challenges in more than a dozen countries worldwide. Our research in 2020 included modeling pandemic-related tradeoffs, mapping the network of global business travel, identifying foreign exchange constraints in Ethiopia, tracking the migration of the Albanian diaspora, and uncovering environmentally friendly diversification opportunities in Peru. Every project, paper, and presentation brought hundreds of charts, graphics, dashboards, and prototypes. We thought it would be worthwhile to...

AIC: A Summer in Albania Working for Investment Capabilities Development

By Damian Galinsky

According to CID’s growth diagnostic findings on Albania, the country has the need to diversify and increase the complexity of the economic base.

As a Harvard Kennedy School student, I spent last summer as a CID intern working on the initial asset analysis and project selection for the Albanian Investment Corporation (AIC). The main objective of AIC is improving growth in Albania through the generation of the capability to identify, prepare, and develop...

Learning Policy in Practice: Insights from the Growth Lab Summer Interns in Albania

Prepared by Daniela Muhaj and Jessie Lu

Three Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) students spent this past summer in Albania as Growth Lab interns, working with local counterparts to develop and implement programs on the ground and making the leap from the classroom to learning policy in practice...

What It's Like Working as a Research Fellow at the Growth Lab

CID's Growth Lab is a dynamic program driven by faculty, fellows, and research assistants who are seeking to understand the facets of economic development and to uncover how countries, regions, and cities can move into more productive activities. Our Research Fellows are integral to the success of...

What It's Like Working as a Research Assistant at the Growth Lab

CID's Growth Lab is a bustling hub of faculty, fellows and staff working to understand the dynamics of economic growth and uncover how countries, regions, and cities can move into more productive activities.

Led by Ricardo Hausmann and a diverse, interdisciplinary team of ...

Does the Sri Lankan Economy Need More University Graduates?

By Ljubica Nedelkoska, Tim O’Brien and Daniel Stock

Sri Lanka has exceptionally low rates of tertiary education admission and graduation for its level of economic development. Many have identified this as a roadblock to Sri Lanka’s economic competitiveness. Using six years of Sri Lanka’s Labor Force Survey, we study the evidence of shortages of tertiary educated workers. Our analysis casts doubt on the existence of a general shortage of university graduates in spite of the low university admission and graduation rates.

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The shortcomings to Albania's integration into the EU

By Ermal Frasheri

To countries like Albania, membership in the European Union is presented as the ultimate modernization project that will lift all boats and bring about greater prosperity and democratization.

However, more often than not, transition reproduces hierarchies and inequities that usually underpin relations between a prosperous center and a...

Alternatives to Economic Growth: A Collaboration with St. Gallen

Growth was at the forefront of the 2016 St. Gallen Symposium - an annual gathering of global leaders in Switzerland. Some 800 present and future leaders debated, "Growth: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," from May 11-13, 2016 in St. Gallen, Switzerland.

The question “What are Alternatives to Economic Growth?” was posed as a topic for the symposium's annual essay competition. The six essay competition finalists were brought together with research...

An insider's view on being CID's Executive Coordinator

Harvard’s Center for International Development is looking for an Executive Coordinator, someone who will be an integral part of the Center’s activities and become a liaison between the Center’s faculty, fellows, staff, students, and important contacts from around the world.

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