Edward Glaeser named co-director of Taubman Center and Rappaport Institute

Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government has named Edward L. Glaeser co-director of the School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government and co-faculty director of the School’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. A longtime faculty affiliate of both the Taubman Center and the Rappaport Institute, Glaeser will assume his new posts July 1. Alan Altshuler, who has served as director of the Taubman Center since its founding in 1988 and faculty director of the Rappaport Institute since its founding in 2000, will partner with Glaeser in co-directing both entities.

Glaeser is a professor of economics in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). His research focuses on urban and social economics and microeconomic theory, with an emphasis on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission.

Dean Joseph S. Nye Jr. said that Glaeser’s decision to accept the role of co-director would further strengthen both the Taubman Center and the Rappaport Institute. “Ed’s leadership will enhance the Taubman Center’s work on pressing state and regional problems and the Rappaport Institute’s work on those issues in Greater Boston,” he said.

Glaeser said he was honored to assume his new roles at the Kennedy School. “The Taubman Center and the Rappaport Institute find themselves at the crux of exciting and critical research and policy analysis at a time when state and local governments are stressed more than ever. We have a vital role to play in dissecting these issues and I look forward to my involvement in these efforts,” Glaeser said.

Altshuler added, “Ed is uniquely qualified to provide the Center and the Institute with a fresh burst of energy and to lead both entities in new directions while continuing to nurture their existing strengths. He is generally acknowledged to be the most original and provocative – as well as perhaps the most productive – urban economist now at work anywhere. It will be our good fortune to have his leadership.”

Glaeser, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1992, joined the Harvard faculty in 1992 and became a full professor in 1998. He teaches urban and social economics and microeconomic theory. The author of dozens of articles on cities, economic growth, and law and economics, Glaeser is editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, co-author (with Alberto Alesina) of “Fighting Poverty in the U.S. and Europe” (2004, Oxford University Press); editor of “The Governance of Not-For-Profit Organizations” (University of Chicago Press, 2003); and co-editor (with John R. Meyer) of “Chile: Political Economy of Urban Development” (Harvard University Press, 2002). He currently is writing a book on economics and the history of American cities.