Harvard professor Raj Chetty is the recipient of the Clark Medal.
American Bazaar Staff
In legal circles, if it is Sri Srinivasan who is being touted as having the best chance of any South Asian origin lawyer till now, to reach the pinnacle of his profession in this country — a justice of the Supreme Court — then in academics, it is New Delhi-born Raj Chetty, an economist at Harvard University, who after winning the 2013 John Bates Clark Medal, has now a chance to win the Nobel prize in economics one day, like many other illustrious Clark winners have done so previously.
Chetty, at 33 is second only to economist Paul Samuelson, who was a year or two older when he received his Clark medal – given by the American Economic Association for achievement by an economist under the age of 40. Past recipients also include the former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, Milton Friedman, and Robert Solow, reported The New York Times.
Chetty is “a scholar who has transformed the field of public economics,” said The Wall Street Journal of him citing the award, which by many is considered next only to the Nobel.
Chetty’s specialty is in the areas of public policy: education, retirement savings and equality of opportunity. He has enlisted sweeping sets of data to produce new insight into individual behavior, and much of it is available on his site at the Harvard University page which lists his bio and career achievements.
One study found that people put more money away for retirement if they have to opt out rather than into a saving plan. Another discovered that shoppers tend to overlook sales taxes and focus on posted pre-tax prices, which is his most cited study. On education, he found that when other factors were accounted for, children who had good teachers in elementary school went on to earn more and have better lives than children who didn’t, reported The Wall Street Journal.
He and his co-authors have used enormous data sets to calculate the value of a great kindergarten teacher ($320,000) and to show the long impact that great teachers have on their students, said The New York Times.
At Harvard, Chetty not only is an economics professor, but is also Co-Director of the Public Economics group at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Editor of the Journal of Public Economics.
He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2003 at the age of 23 and is one of the youngest tenured professors in the university’s history. He has been named one of the top economists in the world by the New York Times and the Economist magazine. He was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2012.
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