Raj Chetty is the William A. Ackman Professor of Public Economics at Harvard University and Director of Opportunity Insights. Chetty’s research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies. His work on tax policy, unemployment insurance, and education has been widely cited in media outlets and Congressional testimony. His current research focuses on equality of opportunity: how can we give children from disadvantaged backgrounds better chances of succeeding?
Chetty earned his AB summa cum laude from Harvard College in 2000 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2003. At the age of 23, Chetty became a professor at the University of California at Berkeley until 2009, when he returned to Harvard as one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard’s history. Chetty was a faculty member at Stanford from 2015 – 2018. In summer 2018, he returned to Harvard where he rejoined the Economic Department and launched Opportunity Insights.
Chetty has received numerous awards for his research, including a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and the John Bates Clark medal, given to the economist under 40 whose work is judged to have made the most significant contribution to the field. He has also received the Sherwin Rosen Prize of the Society of Labor Economists and Calvó-Armengol International Prize in Economics. He was elected as a fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014 and as a member to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018.
