Rema Hanna is aneconomist and is the Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South East Asia Studies atHarvard University'sKennedy School of Government. Moreover, she currently serves as co-director of the Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) research programme at Harvard'sCenter for International Development and a scientific co-director forSoutheast Asia at theAbdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Her research focuses on the efficiency and effectiveness of public services indeveloping countries,[1] with specific focus on service delivery and the impacts of corruption. She is also the co-chair of the editorial board for the academic journal Review of Economics and Statistics.
According toIDEAS/RePEc, Rema Hanna currently (February 2018) belongs to the top 5% of most cited economists.[11] Most of her research is located inpublic economics, often with a focus on Asia.[12] Key findings of her research include:
Monitoring teachers inIndia and linking their salaries to attendance was effective in decreasing teacher absenteeism by 21%, which in turn increased students' test scores by 0.17 standard deviations, suggesting that teachers'labour supply in developing countries may respond strongly to financial incentives (withEsther Duflo and Stephen P. Ryan;[13]
Relative toproxy means tests (PMT), which use households' assets to predict consumption and assess, community-based targeting methods, wherein the community (or its leaders) identify poor households, and a hybrid of PMT and community-based methods are found to be only slightly less effective in targetingIndonesian households living inabsolute poverty, with community-based methods resulting in higher satisfaction, possibly because of the application of community-specific definitions of poverty (with Vivi Alatas,Abhijit Banerjee,Benjamin Olken and Julia Tobias);[14]
Pollution's impact on health may negatively affect labour supply, as the closure of a large refinery inMexico City reducedsulfur dioxide pollution in surrounding neighbourhoods by 19.7%, which in turn increased weekly work hours by 3.5% (with Paulina Oliva).[15]
