Teaching

The Growth Lab teaches and trains economic development practitioners around the world. Housed at Harvard Kennedy School, we fulfill the HKS mission of improving public policy and public leadership so that people can live in societies that are safer, freer, more just, and more sustainably prosperous. 
Ricardo Hausmann teaching to students at Harvard Kennedy School

HKS EXECUTIVE EDUCATION

Strategies for Inclusive Growth

In an increasingly connected world, strategies for economic growth must become more inclusive to account for a multitude of different contexts. Led by Ricardo Hausmann and Matt Andrews, this one-week, on-campus executive program places inclusion at the heart of the economic agenda. Learn to use powerful new tools that create a roadmap to shared prosperity—and to mobilize teams to achieve this goal.

More About This Course

Join leading Harvard experts and peers from around the world to explore the frameworks, tools, and networks needed to drive inclusion-driven economic policy and advance shared prosperity. You will also discover how to apply these policies to your own economic growth challenge. Strategies for Inclusive Growth is designed for senior-level leaders in both public and private sectors who want to advance economic growth and inclusion. Those who will benefit from this program include: policymakers (at the national, state, and city levels), business executives and investors, and development organization leaders. Session dates: Apr. 28 - May 3, 2024.

Apply

HKS EXECUTIVE EDUCATION

Leading Green Growth

Leading Green Growth: Economic Strategies for a Low-Carbon World is a new, one-week on-campus Executive Education program. Under the direction of faculty chairs Ricardo Hausmann and Daniel Schrag, you will gain a foundational understanding of decarbonization and its economic impact. You will also acquire the essential tools and knowledge to anticipate new trends, remain competitive, and achieve prosperity in a low-carbon future.

More About This Course

In Leading Green Growth, you will gather with peers from around the world to analyze what the global energy transition to a low-carbon future means for you. This program will discuss the emerging green technologies that are reshaping the economic landscape. The program examines the key drivers of project success in green growth including how to lower capital costs and fund a green growth agenda. Session dates: Apr. 21 - 26, 2024.

Apply 

Matt Andrews speaks with a participant in an Executive Education course classroom

HKS EXECUTIVE EDUCATION

Leading Economic Growth

Ten-week online executive program brings together leading experts in economic development with practitioners from around the globe to focus on practical approaches to shared growth and development. Led by Ricardo Hausmann and Matt Andrews, the curriculum provides a framework for understanding economic growth, as well as sophisticated tools for diagnosis, decision making, and implementation. 

More About this Course

We’ve transformed our cutting-edge research and frameworks into easily digestible formats for anyone struggling with the question of growth. You could be working in the private or nonprofit sectors, in government, or for a multilateral organization, focused on a country, region, or city. If you’re saying we need to grow more, we need to grow in different ways, in different locations, for the benefit of different peoples—this course is for you. Session dates: Sep. 30 - Dec. 6, 2024.

Apply Now  Download brochure

Students in a classroom at Harvard Kennedy School

HKS MASTERS COURSE

Why Are So Many Countries Poor, Volatile, and Unequal?

This course explores the causes and consequences of three salient and interrelated characteristics of developing countries, namely poverty, volatility, and inequality, and it links them to current themes in development policy. 

More About this Course

The course will characterize the relationships between these three problems and a varied class of proximate and deeper determinants of economic development, including national saving, human capital accumulation, international trade, technology diffusion, demography, geography, economic complexity, and macroeconomic, structural, contractual, and political institutions.

HKS Course Page

HKS MASTERS COURSE

Development Policy Strategy

This course will integrate the analyses of short- and long-run dimensions of development in the design of an overall development strategy. The course will review various determinants of economic growth, macroeconomic volatility, and income distribution, such as factor accumulation, demography, geography, economic complexity, and institutions.

More About this Course

It will develop the tools necessary for diagnosing growth constraints, macroeconomic imbalances, fiscal policy, trade, the performance of financial and labor markets, and the sources of inequality and volatility, with an eye toward relevant policy issues.

HKS Course Page

HKS MASTERS COURSE

The Tools and Methods of Economic Complexity Analysis

This advanced module will present the methods of economic complexity as they can be used for the analysis of places, firms, products, occupations, technologies, scientific research and educational areas, as well as the interactions among them and their evolution over time.

More About this Course

The world is incredibly complex but understanding requires simplification through tractable models that have fewer dimensions. Much of economics has relied on aggregation as a dimensionality reduction mechanism, summing up the economic components of the world into fewer categories such as GDP, capital and labor. However, aggregation erases information regarding the structure of the economy. Economic complexity tools try to minimize this information loss while preserving tractability.

HKS Course Page

Executive Education: Global Reach

Map of the world with certain countries shaded in blueWe have trained more than 1,500 senior policymakers from national, regional and city-level institutions, business executives, program officers, economists, and academics in:

446 cities

135 countries & territories

Blogs: Learning Journey Stories

LEG in Practice: Exploring Growth Opportunities and Renewable Energy in Western Australia

Guest Blog by Warner Priest, LEG ’22

In many cases, I find when faced with a challenge it is difficult to know where to start and what to do and I find myself procrastinating. The step-by-step approach to Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) has become a useful tool to getting whatever challenge I am faced with underway. Breaking down the problem into its root cause, looking for possible solutions, identifying entry points then taking action, reflecting upon what was learned, adapting and then going through the process...

Read more about LEG in Practice: Exploring Growth Opportunities and Renewable Energy in Western Australia
Read more

LEG Learnings: Inclusive Growth and Redistributive Inequality in Namibia

Guest Blog by Charlotte Tjeriko-Katjiuanjo, LEG ’22

The growth problem I chose to look at for Namibia is a lack of a diversified sector, which has caused high unemployment and low economic growth. The country has a high and increasing public debt, limited fiscal space, fiscal consolidation, increasing unemployment with limited product space.

The course has taught me to look at the problem with a different eye, distinguishing between the actual cause of the growth problem to the symptoms of the growth. This was...

Read more about LEG Learnings: Inclusive Growth and Redistributive Inequality in Namibia
Read more

Applying LEG Insights to Growth Challenges in Azerbaijan

Guest Blog by Anar Azimov, LEG ’22

I have come across to the Leading Economic Growth quite by chance. We were discussing with my colleague’s various capacity building options and resources, and one of our colleagues referred to this particular course at the Harvard Kennedy School. Of course, it goes without saying that quality and professionalism of Harvard Schools is a brand. I have read about the course consulted with wide range of colleagues and made decision to take it. After the 10 weeks of course, I can confidently say...

Read more about Applying LEG Insights to Growth Challenges in Azerbaijan
Read more
  •  
  • 1 of 4
  • »

Courses By Alumni

Growth Lab alumni are teaching our methodologies in graduate programs at top universities around the world. 

  • LSE.
  • Harris Public Policy.
  • trachtenberg school of public policy & public administration
  • watson institute
  • UDP
  • UAI.
  • koc university

LEG will reshape your economic development strategy, redefine competition through creativity, and provide you with the unique opportunity to collaborate and learn from people around the world. Let LEG’s incredible leadership team be your guide along a journey you will never forget through practical tools, case studies, and a hall pass to ask 'why' in an effort to tackle economic development’s most complex challenges."

– MAGGIE JONES, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FOR TARRANT COUNTY, TX USA