Eliana La Ferrara

Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to joining Harvard, she held the Invernizzi Chair in Development Economics at Bocconi University in Milan, where she founded the Laboratory for Effective Anti-poverty Policies (LEAP). She works in the broad area of development and political economics, with a focus on the role of social factors in economic development. She has made fundamental contributions to the analysis of ethnicity, trust and conflict, kin structure and social norms, and the impact of television on social outcomes. She has been President of the Econometric Society, of the European Economic Association and of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD).