Glaeser Named Taubman Director

Edward L. Glaeser, the Harvard professor whose eclectic research pursuits have placed him on the cutting edge of microeconomics, will become co-director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Kennedy School this fall.

Glaeser “brings tremendous brilliance and fresh energy to the center,” said Alan Altshuler, who has directed the center since its founding 16 years ago.

The two men will share director duties next academic year as part of a “transition arrangement,” said Altshuer, who will step down from his administrative post next spring but will remain at Harvard as Stanton professor of urban policy and planning.

Meanwhile, Glaeser—who teaches the fall semester course Economics 1011a, “Microeconomic Theory”—will continue to instruct undergraduates at the College.

“Teaching 1011a is one of the great joys in my life and I am not about to allow anything to get in the way of my teaching,” he said.

Glaeser will also serve alongside Altshuler as co-faculty director of the Kennedy School’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.

Glaeser, who came to Harvard in 1992 with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton and a doctorate from the University of Chicago, has immersed himself in the study of metropolitan Boston.

“Boston has over a 400-year continually reinvented itself,” said Glaeser, author of a forthcoming Journal of Economic Geography article examining the city’s storied history. “At every juncture, skilled people with various forms of human capital wanted to stay in Boston instead of running whenever the city hit an economic snag,” Glaeser said.

But the impact of Glaeser’s work extends far beyond Massachusetts. “He revitalized urban economics to become a dynamic field,” University Chicago Professor Gary S. Becker wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson Saturday. Glaeser “is clearly one of the most creative of all economists,” added Becker, winner of the 1992 Nobel prize in economics.

Glaeser “is the heir to Becker in that he has applied economics to explain all manner of human behavior,” Dartmouth Economist Bruce I. Sacerdote wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

While at the University of Chicago, Glaeser worked as a teaching assistant to Becker, who recalled that Glaeser was the fastest grader he has ever seen.

“Ed has a remarkable ability to think deeply and quickly,” Harvard economist David I. Laibson ’88 wrote in an e-mail yesterday. “He has spectacular intuitions and an uncanny ability to identify the key forces at work in economic systems.”

Glaeser spoke to The Crimson Friday while boarding a plane to Baltimore, which, he said, “is one of those cities with less of a skill base that hasn’t had the kind of turnaround as Boston.” While his Baltimore trip is for nonacademic purposes—Maryland is home to his wife’s family—Glaeser has developed a reputation internationally as a globe-trotting consultant dispensing economic advice to far-flung urban centers.

A BRAINIER BRAVEHEART?

Glaeser’s analysis of economic growth in Glasgow and Edinburgh has made him somewhat of a celebrity in Scotland—four centuries after his mother’s family emigrated from the Highlands.

Visiting his ancestral homeland in February, Glaeser told Glasgow officials that their city is teetering on a “knife edge.” He said Glasgow could follow Boston’s model of economic growth—or a Baltimore-style path of urban decay.

Glaeser brought a “breath of fresh air” to Glasgow and Edinburgh, according to The Scottsman, a daily newspaper.

But Glaeser—who extolled the virtues of the automobile to a country that has long prized alternative forms of transportation—drew fire from environmentalists.

“I was pilloried by the left wing of the Scottish press,” Glaeser said. “The car is so anathema to them that saying anything accepting of the automobile is considered outrageous.”

Meanwhile, other Scottish journalists displayed a perverse fascination with Glaeser’s gastronomic habits.

The Sunday Herald, a Glasgow-based newspaper, noted that Glaeser spent breaks from his lecture sipping Diet Irn-Bru.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

“I admit it, I do watch my carbs,” Glaeser told The Crimson.

But the professor has also been monitoring the eating habits of ordinary Americans—and his observations have formed the basis for his ground-breaking work on obesity.

“I’m interested in the world around me. That’s what motivates me to do research,” Glaeser said. “And I think weight is a fascinating topic.”

Last January, Glaeser co-authored a study that found the increasing ease of food preparation has increased Americans’ caloric intake. Since the growth of the pre-packaged food industry allows consumers to spend less time preparing meals, Americans are eating more—and their waist lines are expanding.

Associate Dean for Social Sciences David M. Cutler, another co-author of the obesity study, described Glaeser as “a model collaborator—wonderful to talk to, with great ideas [and] lots of energy.”

“We used to eat chocolate-covered espresso beans until our primary care physicians cut us off,” recounted Sacerdote, who earned his doctorate from Harvard and has co-written several papers with Glaeser. “He always had a great supply of Dominican cigars, and you can’t sleep for a day after having one of those. For many of his graduate students, including me, he’s the whole reason we stayed in economics and saw it as a worthwhile, fun and useful pursuit,” Sacerdote wrote.

BIG CITY BREAKIN’

News of Glaeser’s appointment has drawn a warm reception at the Taubman Center, which was formed in 1988 when an auction house mogul donated $15 million to have the Kennedy School study issues of state and local governance.

“With Professor Glaeser, as we had with Professor Altshuler, we get someone who has a first-rate mind, is a terrific writer, and who appreciates the intersection between research and the world of practice,” said Taubman Center associate director David Luberoff, who will leave his current post to become Executive director of the Rappaport Institute this summer.

Indeed, Glaeser’s work points to a series of suggestions for urban officials.

One recent paper by the prolific professor attacks the theory that rent control reduces racial segregation.

Glaeser, asked to summarize his conclusions on housing regulations, eloquently explained: “Rent control is bad, bad, bad.”

“Rent control stymies the production of new rental housing and causes the dilapidation of existing rental units,” he said. “When you turn off the price mechanism, you get the wrong people in the wrong apartments.”

THE DISMAL SCIENCE

Every two years, the American Economics Association awards its prestigious John Bates Clark Medal to the country’s top economist under 40. Recent Harvard winners include Professor of Economics Andrei Shleifer ’82 and University President Lawrence H. Summers.

The past two times the medal has been doled out, Glaeser was widely considered to be in the running. Now 37, Glaeser will have his last chance at the honor next spring.

Glaeser said he has tried to ignore the speculation.

“You either forego a lot of domestic happiness or you figure out how to deal with this. It is a tremendous honor to be considered remotely in the running. But giving more mental weight to this is unwise,” Glaeser said.

Since earning his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1992, Glaeser’s production of economic literature has continued at a furious rate.

Not only is Glaeser “the world’s leading expert on urban economics,” Cutler wrote in an e-mail Saturday, but “he is also a leading expert on behavioral economics—the study of why people make the decisions they do, and how that plays out in markets.”

Among Glaeser’s most influential papers was a 2002 report, “The Political Economy of Hatred,” in which Glaeser applied the tools of his discipline to explain racial and ethnic animosity.

“The demand for hatred is shaped by the costs of being hateful,” Glaeser wrote. “People who interact frequently with minorities in peaceful market settings will find hatred a costly emotion.” Moreover, the professor argued, politicians will “supply” hatred as a means of garnering support for their policies.

Perhaps Glaeser’s research on mitigating the effects of hatred will come in handy as the Big Apple native enters the virulently pro-Red Sox Rappaport Institute.

Glaeser’s new post will likely force him to hob-nob with Boston politicians. “I would fear for my life if my baseball opinions were known publicly,” Glaeser said.

Raised in New York, Glaeser is the son of a Museum of Modern Art curator, although the economist claims to have “unbelievably little artistic ability.” Moreover, a June 2000 paper co-authored by Glaeser concluded that art museums have no significant impact on a city’s economic growth.

“But since you asked, my favorite era is Northern Renaissance and my favorite painter is van der Weyden,” he said.

A RENAISSANCE MAN

Jesse M. Shapiro ’01, an economics graduate student who co-authored the obesity study with Glaeser and Cutler, described Glaeser as “an extraordinary teacher and adviser...In addition to being a brilliant economist, he is also widely read in history and literature.”

Glaeser “brings a wonderful multidisciplinary focus” to the Taubman Center and the Rappaport Institute, Luberoff said.

Altshuler said Glaeser currently is “the only economist among the faculty members who are most deeply involved in the [Taubman] Center.” But he added that Glaeser “will be able to draw many other economists into the work of the center.”

Glaeser’s “important work on the relationship between segregation and opportunity may help cross the lines between, economics, policy and urban structures,” said Professor Education and Social Policy Gary A. Orfield, who is co-director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project.

While Glaeser has worked as a consultant to officials from New Zealand to Bolivia, Altshuler came to Harvard in 1998 which more extensive government experience. He worked adviser to Massachusetts Gov. Francis Sargent in the late 1960s and served as the state’s transportation secretary in the 1970s before joining Harvard’s faculty in 1988.

“Altshuler’s background in political science...and his practical experience in the Massachusetts state government gave him a broad perspective on urban policy and infrastructure issues,” Orfield said.

Glaeser has already begun to assemble a team of researchers at the Taubman Center to probe the causes of differences in productivity levels among cities.

“I am enthusiastic about continuing Alan’s approach of working with lawyers, political scientists and sociologists to push forward our knowledge of cities,” Glaeser said.

—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.