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Economics is a social science that covers a broad subject matter in seeking to understand the social world. Economics studies the behavior of social systems—such as markets, corporations, legislatures, and families—as the outcome of interactions through institutions between goal-directed individuals. Doing economic research involves asking questions about the social world and addressing those questions with data and models, employing mathematical and statistical tools whenever possible to aid the analysis.

The Ph.D. program in the Department of Economics is addressed to students of high promise who wish to prepare themselves for careers in teaching and research in academia or for responsible positions in government, research organizations, or business enterprises. Students in the department are free to pursue research interests with scholars throughout the University. Faculty of Harvard Law School, Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Business School, for example, are available to students for consultation, instruction, and research guidance.

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Tuition and Costs

There are many factors to consider when choosing a graduate program and cost is certainly one of them. Learn more about HGSE's academic programs in addition to our tuition and cost of attendance.

Tuition Charges

The following tuition and fee charges are in effect for the 2024-2025 academic year and are subject to change for future years. Tuition and fee charges for the 2025-2026 academic year are published in March 2025. Summary (PDF) of tuition and cost information for the current 2023-2024 academic year.

HGSE is committed to helping you achieve your academic and career goals – and offers many financial aid options to support you.

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Please note the Standard Student Budget includes actual tuition and fee amounts as well as estimated allowances for related educational expenses. Tuition and Health Insurance Fees are expenses that are directly billed to students, while all other categories are estimated allowances that should not be exceeded. Financial aid eligibility is determined using the following standard cost estimates, updated estimates are published annually in March for the upcoming academic year. Summary (PDF) of tuition and cost information for the current 2023-2024 academic year.

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* Year 2 in the Ed.L.D Program is a 10 month academic year, while Years 1 and 3 are 9 month academic years.

For full details regarding Ph.D. Program costs, visit the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Cost of Attendance .

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Tuition and fee costs are subject to change and are determined each year. Please be aware that future tuition costs, fees, and standard student budget amounts may differ from year to year. Updated figures will be published on this website and in future editions of the Financing Your Education guide , which is updated on a yearly basis. Information regarding health insurance fees, coverage, and waivers can be found on the Harvard University Student Health Program website . Online part-time Ed.M. students will not be automatically enrolled into the comprehensive student health insurance program. Information regarding billing and payment dates can be found through Harvard Student Accounts .

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Harvard Ph.D. Program in Health Policy

Concentration Chairs:    Timothy J. Layton  and Mark Shepard

Students in the economics concentration can expect to gain skills in the theoretical and empirical tools of economics, including applied econometrics and the application of economic theory to policy problems. Examples of the type of research they pursue includes economic evaluation of the consequences of healthcare policies for equity and efficiency, conceptual and empirical work identifying and quantifying the welfare and distributional consequences of market failures in healthcare, assessments of the effects of market structure and the industrial organization of healthcare on costs and quality of care, work studying the optimal design of social programs, work studying the determinants of changes in population-level and group-specific health and wellbeing, work focusing on the effects of policies and markets on innovation and the diffusion of medical technologies, assessments of the role of behavioral frictions in determining patient and provider behavior, etc. After they graduate, these students often work in academia, government, think tanks, and industry. Important differences between this concentration and other tracks are (1) the math background that is required, (2) the focus on economic theory and quasi-experimental empirical methods and (3) the focus on research that seeks to answer very general questions about the organization of the healthcare system rather than narrower, more focused policy evaluations.

Economics Curriculum Guide

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Opportunity Costs

 Justin Wolfers, PhD ’01, on why women are still underrepresented in the field of economics

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In 2014, the International Monetary Fund named Justin Wolfers, PhD ’01, one of the " 25 Economists Under 45 Who Are Shaping the Way We Think About the Global Economy ". Recently, though, the University of Michigan Professor turned his gaze on the discipline of economics itself, specifically, the way that women in the field are treated. 

You recently collaborated with colleagues Alicia Sasser Modestino, PhD ’01, Muriel Niederle, PhD ’02, and Pascaline Dupas on a study of women and bias in economics presentations. What was the question you were trying to answer, what was your method, and what did you find?

The big picture question is “Why are women still underrepresented in economics?” There’s an emerging body of research on this topic. To summarize it, every rock we look under we find evidence of bias, whether it’s in the publication process, the evaluation process, how we grant leaves, and so on.

On a personal level, I’m partnered with the economist Betsy Stevenson, PhD ’01, another GSAS alum. So, I have had the experience of seeing the career of a professional economist once through a man’s eyes and once through a woman’s eyes. We write a lot of papers together and I’ll give a talk and she’ll give a talk and we’ll immediately see that we have very, very different experiences. I suspect that gender may be part of it.

Now, one of the unique facts about economics is our seminar culture, which is far more abrasive relative to any other social science. So, it’s not hard to immediately think, “Is this part of the problem? Part of the underrepresentation of women in economics?”

Once we decided to study seminar culture, we needed to find people who were invited to seminars at top economics departments around the country, so we started recruiting graduate student collaborators who are listed on the paper as full co-authors. Nearly 100 graduate students around the country agreed to turn up at a bunch of seminars and collect data. We designed an iPad app where they could just sit in their classroom and code “Right now, a male professor started speaking. Right now, a female graduate student started speaking,” and so on. Some seminars we had multiple coders and we found that they coded very similarly, so there’s not a lot of subjectivity.

The result is that we have a complete map encoding literally hundreds of seminars at top institutions around the country. But if you really want to understand what’s going on, you have to tell stories. So, we asked our collaborators also to record their subjective impressions. Was this question patronizing? Was it hostile? Was it helpful? Was it clarifying? What we found was that women economists are on average interrupted 12 percent more often than men. And the nature of those interruptions is more likely to be patronizing and hostile.

What do those results tell us about the way that the economics profession treats women? What’s the impact on the careers of female economists and their ability to disseminate the knowledge they create?

Think of it this way: If you had 12 percent more scrutiny in every aspect of your professional life, the accumulation of that would be enormous. Our findings may be part of a broader pattern that’s reflective of the culture within economics. And that culture probably shapes a wide range of behaviors, from how we act at seminars, to how we evaluate people for tenure, how we read and referee reports, right down to how we treat each other in the hallways.

That culture may be particularly problematic in some of those domains, less so in others. For instance, women economists have told me anecdotally that they’re less likely to be invited out for a beer by their advisor. Now, is that important? Perhaps not. But perhaps it really matters: Relationships with advisors are lifelong relationships in which they continue to do the right thing by you for many, many years.

The bottom line is that we’ve yet to find a study that looked at any part of professional life for women economists where it didn’t look like the odds were somewhat stacked against them. So, I don’t want to say that seminars are the problem, but seminars are a reflection of the culture, and it’s a very male culture. 

If that’s the case, what can be done to level the playing field for women economists?

A common refrain among economists is that our rough-and-tumble ways create greater scrutiny and rigor, and we don’t want to lose that. My response has always been that it’s hard to believe that oafish behavior is a complement to rigor and easy to believe it’s a substitute. That said, I’ve gone to seminars in many fields that were entirely respectful and you sit there and listen and at the end applaud. The true exchange of ideas is lost somewhere along the way and some rigor is lost. To my fellow economists who are afraid of moving in that direction, I say that neither I nor my co-authors want to go there. But it’s not an “either-or.”

The good news is that there’s a growing awareness of the impact of gender bias in economics. And we are making changes. Many of my male colleagues who are senior economists are now aware of the importance of showing leadership just by illustrating what productive behavior looks like. A lot of seminars at the University of Michigan, where I teach, now have a rule where you don’t interrupt for the first ten minutes.

It’s obvious that these changes are moves in the right direction. We can engage the ideas in economics with rigor and we can do it in a way that is respectful and welcoming. And I think there’s a lot more we can do in the years ahead.

Photo courtesy of Justin Wolfers

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Harvard University Master’s in Economics

The main focus area for this major is Econometrics & Quantitative Economics . For more details on this concentration, visit its profile page.

Economics is a major offered under the social sciences program of study at Harvard University. We’ve gathered data and other essential information about the master’s degree program in economics, such as if the program is offered online, ethnicity of students, how many students graduated in recent times, and more.

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Featured Programs

Learn about start dates, transferring credits, availability of financial aid, and more by contacting the universities below.

MS in Applied Economics

If you're the kind of person who enjoys working with numbers and solving tough problems, a graduate degree in economics may be for you.

How Much Does a Master’s in Economics from Harvard Cost?

Harvard graduate tuition and fees.

During the 2019-2020 academic year, part-time graduate students at Harvard paid an average of $0 per credit hour. No discount was available for in-state students. The following table shows the average full-time tuition and fees for graduate student.

Does Harvard Offer an Online Master’s in Economics?

Online degrees for the Harvard economics master’s degree program are not available at this time. To see if the school offers distance learning options in other areas, visit the Harvard Online Learning page.

Harvard Master’s Student Diversity for Economics

Male-to-female ratio.

About 38.3% of the students who received their Master’s in economics in 2019-2020 were women. This is less than the nationwide number of 41.2%.

Racial-Ethnic Diversity

Racial-ethnic minority graduates* made up 12.8% of the economics master’s degrees at Harvard in 2019-2020. This is about the same as the nationwide number of 14%.

Master’s in Economics Focus Areas at Harvard

Economics students may decide to major in one of the following focus areas.

Majors Related to a Master’s in Economics From Harvard

You may also be interested in one of these majors related to economics.

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*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.

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PhD in Economics at the prestigious Harvard University is a prestigious degree that offers in-depth learning in Economics. Being a renowned university, Harvard University receives enough funds to ensure the best education facilities for its students across all programs. This doctorate program offered full-time primarily focuses on the practical implementation of fresh ideas through rigorous study and research. The students are encouraged to add new aspects and findings to the existing area of knowledge. PhD in Economics at Harvard is ranked globally by estimated organisations. Such recognition speaks volumes about the course’s importance and effectiveness in the present scenario. The top-notch faculty, modern facilities, and the aura of creativity and innovation in the Harvard campus is a life-changing experience for the students looking forward to kickstarting or upgrading their careers. Overall, a PhD in Economics at Harvard University is an excellent opportunity to grow into a learned professional and bring new developments in the world.

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Master in Public Administration

Prepare for greater responsibility across sectors with this flexible two-year program

Key Program Information

Program Length: Two years (varies for students pursuing concurrent degrees)

Degree Awarded: Master in Public Administration

Admission Application Deadline: December 2024

Financial Aid Application Deadline: January 2025

Contact the MPA Program

79 John F. Kennedy Street Littauer Building, Room 126 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Elevate your impact as a public leader

The Master in Public Administration Program is for aspiring leaders with real-world experience and graduate-level coursework in economics, public policy, or management.

The Master in Public Administration (MPA) curriculum is flexible. You create a study plan that reflects your academic interests, focuses on your personal and professional aspirations, and integrates across disciplines.

You may also decide to pursue a concurrent degree in business, law, medicine, or other professional fields. You’ll earn two degrees in less time and acquire even more skills you can use to make a difference in the world.

“HKS provided opportunities for me to expand the narrative of what diversity looks like in foreign policy and foreign service.” —Korde Innis MPA 2023

About the MPA Program

The MPA curriculum is flexible. You’ll create your own 64-credit study plan that reflects your academic interests and professional aspirations.

As an MPA student, you’ll take eight credits in a Policy Area of Concentration as well as four credits in each of these key areas:

• Economics and Quantitative Analysis
• Management, Leadership, and Decision Sciences
• Public Ethics and Political Institutions

You’ll select your remaining credits to support your unique intellectual and professional objectives. You can take classes across academic disciplines at HKS and cross-register into courses at other Harvard graduate schools as well as at MIT Sloan School of Management and The Fletcher School at Tufts University. 

Sample Courses

• MLD-223: Negotiating Across Differences
• API-135: Economics of Climate Change and Environmental Policy
• DPI-640: Technology and the Public Interest: From Democracy to Technocracy and Back

Concurrent Degrees

You might consider  pursuing a second degree concurrently  if you’re interested in how the world’s public challenges can be addressed at the intersection of business, law, medicine, design, or other fields.

Pursuing a concurrent degree reduces coursework and residency requirements and makes it possible to earn two degrees in a shorter amount of time.

Concurrent degree students complete 48 credits at HKS, including four credits in each of the key areas:

Concurrent degree students are not required to fulfill the Policy Area of Concentration requirement.

Degree Requirements

The MPA Program consists of four semesters of full-time coursework in residence at HKS.

To graduate, you must:

• Earn at least 64 credits
• Finish with a GPA of B or better
• Earn a B- or higher in all courses counting towards the distribution requirements
• Matriculate as a full-time, in-residence student and take between 12-20 credits per semester
• Fulfill a Policy Area of Concentration requirement by taking eight credits in one of the policy areas at HKS
• Economics and Quantitative Analysis

HKS  faculty members  are among the most influential leaders and thinkers in their fields. They have contributed vital research and scholarship to their fields. Served in U.S. administrations. Founded learning labs to assist local communities. Led negotiations to reduce nuclear stockpiles. Reported on human rights abuses. Led efforts to address climate change. Advised governments and companies on gender equality.

They are doers as well as thinkers, shaping public policy and devising entrepreneurial approaches to public problems at the local, national, and international levels.  

MPA Faculty Chair

Kessely Hong

Mpa at a glance.

*Statistics are based on a five-year average.

Employment Snapshot:  MPA Class of 2023 Employment Sectors

* The number of private sector jobs secured by MPA graduates is, in large part, a reflection of the program’s many concurrent degree graduates.

Featured MPA stories

Elevating the stories of diverse, unsung women.

Jamie Mittleman MPA 2022 launched her COVID-adapted dream job: a platform for women Olympians and Paralympians.

A long military heritage shapes a desire for peace

Clark Yuan MPA 2022 wants unique perspectives to have a seat at the table when critical decisions are being made.

From Santiago to Cambridge to Paris

For Ingrid Olea MPA 2020, a journey that started with a career change has led to remarkable achievements in education policymaking.

Applying to the MPA Program

Prerequisites.

There are specific academic and professional prerequisites required to apply to the MPA Program. You must have:

• A bachelor’s degree with a strong academic record 
• Three years of professional work experience by September 1 of the year you would enroll in the program
• Master of Business Administration
• Master of International Business
• Master of International Development
• Master of International Economics
• Master of Science in Engineering

How to Apply

A complete application to the MPA Program includes the following: 

• Online application
• Three letters of recommendation
• GRE or GMAT required
• Non-native English speakers who did not earn an undergraduate degree conducted in English must submit results of the TOEFL, IELTS, or Cambridge English exam
• Academic transcripts
• $100 application fee or waiver

Read more about how to apply . 

The application for the 2025-2026 academic year will be available in September 2024. There is one admission application deadline and one start date for each degree program per year. You may apply to only one master's degree program per admissions cycle. 

Tuition & Fees

The cost of attendance for the 2024-2025 academic year is outlined in  Funding Your Master ’ s Education  to help you plan financially for our master’s degree programs. Living expense costs are based on residence in Cambridge. The 2025-2026 academic year rates will be published in March 2025. HKS tuition and fees are subject to change without notice. 

At HKS, we consider financing your education to be a partnership and are here to help guide you. We encourage you to explore all opportunities for funding .

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Student life, student stories, admissions & financial aid blog.

What If We’re Telling the Wrong Story about Climate Change?

Chika Okafor’s research merges economics with educational psychology to understand how the methods we use to communicate about important issues influence public action.

In recent years, the news has been filled with a seemingly endless stream of articles about the negative effects of climate change: extreme temperatures, flooding, increasingly destructive hurricanes, lost crops, and much more. Engaging with this influx of negative material can be intimidating and demoralizing. It can even lead to the impression that the climate crisis is just too big of a problem to solve and that, therefore, it’s not worth trying.

Repeated exposure to disaster coverage may also lead to “ crisis fatigue ,” a burnout response to prolonged stress resulting from difficult situations. This phenomenon has been well-documented with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic , and researchers have also linked it to climate change. Over time, those experiencing crisis fatigue can develop psychological trauma . So what can we do differently?

According to Chika Okafor, the 2023–2024 Edna Newman Shapiro, Class of 1936, and Robert Newman Shapiro, Class of 1972, Graduate Student Fellow at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, climate disaster stories employ what’s called a “deficit-based approach” to communication, which might be problematic when it comes to mobilizing support to fight climate change.

Educational psychology, a field of study that is often drawn on in the context of teaching students who come from challenging backgrounds, defines two different approaches to instruction: the deficit-based approach and the asset-based approach. In basic terms, the deficit-based approach emphasizes the problems that students are facing, while the asset-based approach focuses on students’ strengths and the opportunities available to them. Imagine your teacher says to you, “If you fail this exam, you won’t be able to get into college.” How does that make you feel? Now imagine she says, instead, “If you pass this exam, you’ll have a better chance of getting into your dream school.”

The problem with the deficit-based approach, says Okafor—who is also the inaugural fellow in law and political economy at Harvard Law School and a PhD candidate in Harvard’s Department of Economics—is it can create a “self-fulfilling prophecy, where students may not elevate beyond the lowered expectations of their instructors.” In contrast, educational psychology researchers have shown that an asset-based approach can be used to enable students to overcome the barriers they face.

Okafor was born and raised in Chicago, the son of two Nigerian immigrants and the youngest of four children. Growing up, Okafor’s father instilled in him the idea that “education is arming yourself to the teeth.” Education allowed his father to escape extreme poverty in southeastern Nigeria, immigrate to the United States, and raise his family there.

Photo by Tony Rinaldo

After college (and a brief stint in consulting), Okafor returned to Chicago to work in the public school system. He recalls roaming the halls of Paul Robeson High School, in the South Side of Chicago, and thinking that, in some ways, the school resembled a prison—police cars remained permanently parked outside, metal grates were used to control the flow of adolescents, and a police chopper hovered overhead while students were released at the end of the school day.

For Okafor, the experience was so impactful that he decided to continue arming himself, first by enrolling at Yale Law School and then in Harvard’s economics PhD program. He saw law and economics as two powerful means to make progress on some of the complex social and economic issues he had witnessed play out at Robeson and elsewhere.

Okafor’s doctoral project is expansive and ambitious, addressing several major social and economic problems, including economic inequality, rising incarceration rates, and, of course, climate change. What unites these disparate chapters is the application of economic theory and experimental methods, along with econometric techniques, to better understand important issues.

Okafor chose climate change for the third and final chapter, and the focus of his time at Radcliffe, because it’s “the 800-pound gorilla in the room that will make just about every index of inequality wider and significantly impact the people who are already most vulnerable in our society.”

One of the challenges of addressing climate change, Okafor notes, is its complexity. Video produced by Alan C. Grazioso/Harvard Radcliffe Institute

Drawing on lessons learned from working in education, and inspired by the New York Times interactive children’s guide “ Bad Future, Better Future ,” Okafor designed an experiment to test the public’s response to deficit-based and asset-based approaches to instructional materials.

First, he worked with a multimedia design team to develop two versions of an educational video on climate change: one that relies on a deficit-based approach and one that relies on an asset-based approach. Next, Okafor devised a survey to record respondents’ reactions upon exposure to either the deficit-based video, the asset-based video, or both, and he administered it to 2,500 participants across the United States.

Okafor is currently in the process of collecting and analyzing the survey results, which he will use to assess the videos’ impact on climate change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Through the surveys, he also collected data on demographic characteristics such as race, gender, and income—data which he hopes will shed light on the extent to which these characteristics might influence ideas and behaviors regarding climate change.

“What I’m trying to see in my research is if there is a different way of talking about climate change that could have a much greater impact on generating the amount of public support that is required to mitigate the worst effects,” says Okafor.

Following his line of reasoning, we must question our approaches to talking and writing about climate change if we want to maximize the impact of our words. What if we were to shift the focus of our climate-related reporting toward a more solution-oriented perspective? What implications would this shift in communication strategy have as far as motivating public action?

Importantly, deploying an asset-based approach does not necessitate minimizing hardship. The point is not to gloss over or obscure challenges but, rather, to acknowledge them and figure out how to address them.

In the context of news reporting, this might look like increasing the number of stories about how to reduce environmental degradation, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and mitigate the consequences of climate change, without reducing the level of coverage on climate disasters. Disaster stories are important insofar as they elicit an emotional response and underscore the importance of taking action. But they don’t tell us how to act, which can lead to a sense of helplessness.

We might also add sections with possible solutions to stories about climate-related issues. There are many approaches, but the key is to emphasize opportunities for progress, to avoid painting a picture of such doom that our audience simply gives up and tunes out.

That education is a powerful tool may be a truism, but Okafor’s story bears it out. “When I was growing up, I thought that arming yourself to the teeth meant doing so for yourself, to escape or stave off poverty or unequal opportunities, or to shore up financial security” he reflects. “But through this journey toward a PhD, I more deeply understand the extent to which education can be arming yourself in service of others, particularly those who are most vulnerable.”

Sam Zuniga-Levy is a writer at Harvard Radcliffe Institute .

News & Ideas

Episode 208: Kindness—It’s Good for You!

Episode 207: Let’s Talk about Climate Resilience

Episode 206: Tackling Environmental Inequality across Academic Disciplines

Student Spotlight: Chassidy Winestock PhD ’24

The Sounds of Change

Episode 205: A Conversation with Ruth J. Simmons

Episode 204: Math—It’s Not Just Numbers