Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Michael Kremer Departs Harvard for UChicago

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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(The latest of many faculty members UChicago has poached recently from Harvard, Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, Stanford…)

Harvard Economics professor Michael R. Kremer ’85, one of the recipients of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, is leaving Cambridge to direct a new Development Innovation Lab at the University of Chicago.

“The University of Chicago’s commitment to the Development Innovation Lab provides a tremendous opportunity to develop new knowledge on ways to address global poverty and ultimately to expand economic opportunity and improve lives,” Kremer wrote in an email. “I am excited to join the faculty at Chicago and to help build the Lab.”

Kremer, who will join both the Economics and Harris School of Public Policy faculties at the University of Chicago, will begin his new roles on Sept. 1.

Harvard Economics chair Jeremy C. Stein wrote in an email to the department faculty that Kremer’s departure is an “enormous loss.”

“This is an enormous loss and we will miss Michael terribly—as a scholar, colleague, mentor, and friend,” Stein wrote. “But I know you join me in wishing both Michael and Rachel all the best in their new endeavors at Chicago.

Kremer wrote that he will remember his three decades — including more than 20 years as a professor — at Harvard fondly.

“I have had a wonderful experience at Harvard as an undergraduate, graduate student, and faculty member, and learned a tremendous amount from colleagues and students here,” he wrote.

Kremer won the 2019 Nobel Prize along with MIT Economics professors Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo for their research on alleviating global poverty.

The group pioneered a new approach to development economics: conducting experiments with randomized controlled trials to explore the root causes of poverty in developing countries.

Kremer was scheduled to teach ECON 2390: “Development Economics” and several graduate seminars this fall, and Freshman Seminar 41J: “Economic Development” in the spring. The Freshman Seminar Program announced on its website that the course would no longer be offered.

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The best Econ department in the world just got even better! How many living Nobels are now on faculty in Econ or Booth at Chicago? Thaler, Larsen, Fama, Kremer, etc.? Kremer appointed as University Professor, arguably the highest title available at UChicago: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/nobel-winning-economist-michael-kremer-join-uchicago-faculty-university-professor

Last year, Chicago snagged a Yale quantum professor: https://jianggroup.yale.edu

This year, the CS department expanded even further with 4 new junior faculty.

Love seeing Chicago selectively grow its faculty when its peers are budget cutting and freezing headcount across the board.

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Sorry to be a Debbie Downer here, but what used to separate UChicago from other places was that they managed to grow their own Nobel Laureates. Now they purchase them. That helps with marketing but not sure it helps distinguish UChicago from other places; particularly those that are more well-heeled in terms of endowment.

Of course, if other places are slashing budgets or spending their money on other goals not consistent with an academic mission, then that’s another matter and will serve UChicago very well going forward. Top grad students will flock to where the cool research is going on.

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@JBStillFlying Those two may be a long shots but I am hoping for either Doug Diamond (money and banking) or John List (experimental economics) to be our home grown Nobel Laureate. Heck, Doug Diamond was at GSB when I was there. It would be nice to see Diamond getting recognized.

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This sounds like that old UChicago habit of trying to turn a positive into a negative.

There really isn’t a scenario in which poaching a senior faculty member from another institution less than a year after they win the Nobel prize is a negative.

You will note Harvard’s Econ chair called it “an enormous loss”; he didn’t say “it’s a sign Chicago is going downhill.”

Really there are two separate issues here:

  1. What this may mean for the Chicago School of Economics, which I’ll leave others to comment on. Has the department broadened its focus, etc.

  2. Faculty recruitment. All schools recruit faculty from elsewhere. You can either lose faculty to other schools or gain them. UChicago has an increasing number of “wins” in this regard recently–regardless of how well-endowed the competitor was. Size of endowment may not matter or be the decisive factor. LOL.

Historically UChicago probably mostly lost faculty to Harvard. But these days it’s even able to pull brand new Nobel Prize winners from Harvard, which says something about UChicago’s rising appeal to faculty not only students.

Yes, it’s nice to have your current faculty win Nobels but we shouldn’t try to claim that winning the award elsewhere means nothing.

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What difference does it make if the Lakers win a championship by poaching LeBron James from Cleveland (homegrown), or if Tom Brady wins a Super Bowl with Tampa Bay after leaving New England?

All that matters is the bottom line, just win (eminence) Baby!

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@CrescatScientia - oh good. My prior reputation of being an unapologetic rah-rah must surely be changed now :wink:

Clarification: Kremer is NOT “Chicago School.” He’s not even a theorist. Lately the Nobel Committee is rewarding innovative methodology that doesn’t necessarily rely on theoretical frameworks. Is that a good idea? I don’t know - I dont think it’s necessarily a BAD idea. But it probably means that @85bears46 can put the dream of Doug Diamond winning someday to bed. Same with Townsend.

UChicago Econ must respond to the times. That always means welcoming a group of top researchers who feel they are better off doing their work there than elsewhere. Kremer is a good hire. Barro might have been the last to leave Chicago and land at Harvard, and that was a rather indirect path. This one was a long time in coming.

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  • It's just the difference between playing the game well and changing the game. Chicago Econ was very good at the latter at one point.

Regarding athletics, I seem to recall an admissions officer saying that UChicago was known for major innovations in the game of football once upon a time. And then, Alonzo Stagg did coach the inventor of basketball, James Naismith, but it was at another school. That was all a long time ago.

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In response to Post #2 above:

Now if the University of Chicago could just buy the New York Yankees… :smile:

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@JBStillFlying Darn, then I have to root for the two John Bate Clark Medal winners: Steve Levitt and Kevin Murphy. That will be scraping the barrel though ;).

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I would have thought that Townsend had a great shot because his work is outstanding; but lately the Nobel committee has been turning away from general equilibrium models to embrace the new sexy. The Clark medal at one time was considered to be a predictor but not sure that’s true anymore since they give it out every year now. Esther Duflo won both but she’s unusually young to be winning a Nobel and I’m really not sure of the relevance of her work with Banerchee, ,though admittedly I know very little about RCT. It sounds intriguing but I would worry about the ethics. Anyway, it’s the new sexy.

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Maybe the Nobel Committee this year will swing back to award some old guys. I always feel bad for Neil Wallace that he didn’t get it with Tom Sargent. So I hope he gets it this year with Barro (who might have been too controversial in my days but by now I hope everyone has mellowed out towards him). Or earlier quant guys like David Kreps and Jose Scheinkman. Or some really old guy like Dale Jorgenson.

My weak spot is for Michael Jensen. I read a fair amount of his empirical work when I was in GSB. From my limited (and of course biased) understanding he was the pioneer to bring some serious work in financial economics to HBS. But he had been out of academia for a while. So his chance is as good as Sandy Grossman’s, which means very slim.

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From Harvard Magazine:

GATES PROFESSOR OF DEVELOPING SOCIETIES Michael Kremer ’85, Ph.D. ’92, who shared the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with two colleagues from MIT for their work on economic development and alleviating global poverty, will depart Harvard for a new academic home at the University of Chicago, beginning September 1. Chicago has an outstanding economics department (which has been endowed by and named for Kenneth C. Griffin ’89, founder and CEO of Citadel, a hedge fund and financial-services company—and a lead donor to Harvard, as well, principally for undergraduate financial aid). Kremer will become one of only 10 active University Professors at Chicago, joining both the economics department and, in a secondary position, the faculty of the university’s Harris School of Public Policy.

Kremer’s departure, so soon after winning the Nobel honor, no doubt comes as a disappointment in Cambridge—all the more so given his undergraduate and doctoral ties to the University, and his close research partnership with his colleagues just downriver at MIT. At Chicago, Kremer will become director of a new Development Innovation Lab.

The University of Chicago has been competing vigorously for academic talent. It seems to have a penchant for Crimson faculty members, and something of a track record for attracting them. For example, another high-profile Harvard professor (and Ph.D., 1998) attracted to the Midwest recently is Sendhil Mullainathan, whose behavioral analyses of poverty were featured in a 2015 cover story in this magazine. He is now Roman Family University Professor of computation and behavioral science at Chicago’s Booth School of Business, whose faculty he joined in 2018. Katherine Baicker, also Ph.D. ’98, formerly a professor of health economics on Harvard’s public-health faculty (her research was covered here), was wooed away in 2017 to become professor at and dean of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.

Such relocations are not unheard of, but no institution likes to see a newly minted Nobelist head for new pastures, especially at the heart of his or her career. During a time when the University is coping with significant financial dislocations—within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (facing great uncertainties about its undergraduate enrollment, tuition revenues, extension-school operations, and pandemic costs), and Harvard Business School (whose important executive-education business is almost entirely in abeyance), and elsewhere—retaining faculty members and recruiting new ones become especially challenging. Kremer’s decision is particularly high-profile, but the phenomenon will merit watching.

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Well, they got our athletic director so let’s call it Even.

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A UChicago administrator once said to me years ago–“Universities compete over faculty–not administrators.”

But one thing I know for certain–Massachusetts shall soon break off and sink into the ocean.

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This was coming but the formal announcement today of the 5 national quantum science centers where Fermi and Argonne are 2 of the 5 centers makes Chicago and UChicago the center of quantum science research in the US: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/doe-selects-argonne-fermilab-lead-two-multi-million-dollar-national-quantum-research-centers

This can only further accelerate UChicago’s investments in CS and Engineering, and let’s sit back and watch the poaching of top academic talent to Hyde Park continue!

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Thaler is not Chicago School either…

And isn’t this new guy just continuing the fact based Economic that is a hallmark of Chicago a la Fogel who did population and race based research and that other guy who did labor economics ?

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Oh wow. UChicago got not 1 but two pieces of the Quantum pie? Nice. Polsky’s tie in with the military research and product development stuff is making a lot of dividends. (I see the military connection to anything computer or internet related research)

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@FStratford - you mean Rosen?

There has always been a strong empirical tradition at Chicago. Didn’t that come from the Milty Man himself? (Friedman, that is).

However, there has also been a strong general equilibrium theoretical bunch too (Lucas, Hansen, Townsend who is now at MIT; more recently Alvarez and Shimer). Lately the methods have been shifting toward experimental and now RCT. Not a bad thing - but not necessarily “Chicago School.” I’m an old fart so I call some of the current methods “cutesy.” Others call it Twitter Economics. The winds of change and the groans of the old guys.

Heckman has an article about RCT: https://www.nber.org/papers/t0107.pdf

And then there is this: https://www.cgdev.org/blog/rapid-rise-randomistas-and-trouble-rcts

Is some of this simply a movement against higher math?

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I like Sherwin Rosen: a very thoughtful and systemic professor. IMHO he taught students more about economics than Mert Miller the Nobel Laureate.

Hey, @JBStillFlying , does that mean John List is now the favorite to win Nobel because of his work with field experiments? Field experiments most certainly are not higher math like Lars Hansen GMM.