Graft Paper

Harvard's Ben Olken, 32, studies the economics of bribery and assassination in developing nations.

Michael C. Moynihan | February 28, 2008

In his nondescript office on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, nestled in a far-off corner of Harvard Square, Ben Olken ruminates on the economic consequences of tyrannicide, the damaging effects of television on social cohesion, and the byzantine system of bribery in Indonesia. Olken, a 32-year-old with an undergraduate degree from Yale (in mathe­matics and “ethics, politics, and economics”) and an economics doctorate from Harvard, is a ris­ing star in the field of developmental economics. Olken is currently a member of Harvard’s Society of Fellows, a prestigious institution within the institution, where the best young scholars pursue what interests them. Among economists alone, former Junior Fellows include Paul Samuelson, Carl Kaysen, Jeffrey Sachs, Steven Levitt, and James Tobin.

Olken is “one of the most exciting young scholars in economics,” his Harvard adviser, Lawrence F. Katz, former chief economist to the U.S. Labor Department, told The Chronicle of Higher Education. He is.

Read the entire article at The American.

Comments

|2.28.08 @ 6:36PM|#

Very interesting article, this guy has some great ideas.

|2.28.08 @ 8:05PM|#

It's simply fascinating to me that somebody would even think of and investigate this connection. The reality is that assassinations are done for a purpose, and to show that they actually help bring about order is a fantastic notion.