Initiative announces 2002-03 fellows

The Program on Justice, Welfare, and Economics at Harvard University has announced its graduate student fellowship recipients for 2002-03. This new, interdisciplinary initiative connects faculty and student research across the University, and promotes research, learning, and knowledge connecting the study of freedom, justice, and economics to human welfare and development. Dissertation fellowships and research grants will support Harvard graduate students whose research topics are relevant to questions of justice and human welfare. The main thrust of this initiative is to develop a new generation of students, linked to distinguished scholars, whose work encompasses ethical, political, and economic dimensions of human development. The members of the faculty committee involved in the initiative are professors Martha Minow and Thomas Scanlon (co-chairs), K. Anthony Appiah, Jorge I. Dominguez, Benjamin Friedman, Michael Kremer, Jane Mansbridge, Frank Michelman, Dennis Thompson, and Richard Tuck. The program is housed at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

The 2002-03 dissertation fellowship recipients follow:

Nava Ashraf, a Ph.D. candidate in economics, will study the impact of corn trade liberalization on rural welfare in Mexico under NAFTA.

Daniel Gingerich, a Ph.D. candidate in government, will study administrative reform in Latin America, bringing cultural and institutional dimensions to the game theoretic analysis of corruption.

Xiaojiang Hu, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology, will examine the role of ethnic minority networks in the development of the business sector in Tibet and also address ethnic inequalities within a comparative and global framework.

Waheed Hussain, a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy, will develop a conception of freedom as rational self-determination by drawing on and critiquing the work of Nozick and Sen and by developing the institutional arrangements of economic democracy, using representative and direct democracy devices.

Seema Jayachandran, a Ph.D. candidate in economics, will respond to the dilemma posed when successor regimes face debt incurred by a prior regime under illegitimate or undemocratic circumstances. Jayachandran will develop a model for the debt market among sovereign governments with the aim of preventing the emergence of debt taken on illegitimately.

Kala Mulqueeny, an S.J.D. candidate in law, will consider transnational regulatory and non-regulatory methods to direct private sector investment in large-scale infrastructure projects (such as power plants, dams, mining, and highways) toward sustainable development, with a focus on Southeast Asia.

Hani Sayed, an S.J.D. candidate in law, will examine the Third World position in international law and the language used by international lawyers to articulate and manage the problem of global inequality.

Sven Spengemann, an S.J.D. candidate in law, will analyze the prospects for international governance working through networks (connecting, for example, regulatory agencies across countries) to take account of differences in economic development and administrative capacity.

The 2002-03 summer research grant recipients follow:

Ronald Chen, a J.D. candidate in law, will develop an analysis of the moral, political, and psychological concerns insufficiently addressed in prevailing economic analyses, especially in relationship to nonmonetary distributive considerations.

David Evans, a Ph.D. candidate in economics, will engage in an empirical study of families fostering HIV/AIDS orphans in Kenya to examine how intrahousehold and intracommunity inequalities emerge from the response to the epidemic.

Bryan Graham, a Ph.D. candidate in economics, will develop a framework for estimating the size and nature of social interactions as determinants of child health in Indonesia.

Guanglin Liu, a Ph.D. candidate in history, will examine the economic development of Shanghai in relationship to changes in social structure and civil society between the 12th and 19th centuries.