Melissa Dell

Photograph of Melissa Dell

Melissa Dell

Photograph by Wess Gray/Courtesy of Melissa Dell

Economics professor Melissa Dell has studied everything from colonialism’s impact on development in Indonesia to global trade and worker displacement in Mexico. A development economist, she studies countries her discipline once ignored: “In the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, people in academic institutions like Harvard predominantly studied the U.S. and Europe,” she explains. “Economics was a very mathematical field” that assumed “markets function perfectly and information is perfect, and you just can’t really think about development if you make those assumptions.” On a College internship in Peru, Dell worked on microfinance, making small loans to women selling snacks on the street—and realized its limits as a poverty alleviation strategy. “If you give another woman a loan to set up a stand,” she says, “it may be good for her, but essentially it’s kind of stealing business from other places.” Growing up in Enid, Oklahoma, where her parents were contractors on an Air Force base, she researched how to apply to schools like Harvard on her own: “At first my parents were kind of annoyed, like, ‘Oh, that’s not a place that’s for people like us.’ ” Financial aid allowed her to attend; she graduated as a top student in 2005. After a Ph.D. from MIT, Dell joined Harvard’s Society of Fellows and then its faculty in 2014. She recently won the Clark Medal, the top prize for economists under 40, and has been diving into machine learning in order to digitize vast troves of data—critical, she says, to unlocking previously unanswerable questions about countries’ economic histories. Meanwhile, the former ultramarathoner’s priorities have been changed by two young children: beyond family and economics, “there’s really not time for anything else.” 

Click here for the July-August 2020 issue table of contents

Read more articles by Marina N. Bolotnikova

You might also like

Nicole Maestas

The Harvard health economist not afraid to get in the weeds

The Professor Who Quantified Democracy

Erica Chenoweth’s data shows how—and when—authoritarians fall.

Making Money Funny

Matt Levine’s spunky Bloomberg column

Most popular

Harvard Commencement Day 2025

The 374th Commencement exercises 

Trump Administration Alleges Harvard Violated Student Civil Rights

In a court filing, the University says government has ignored procedure to “inflict pain.”

House Committee Subpoenas Harvard Over Tuition Costs

The University must turn over all requested materials related to tuition and financial aid by mid-July. 

Explore More From Current Issue

The Harvard Professor Who Quantified Democracy

Erica Chenoweth’s data shows how—and when—authoritarians fall.

Garber, Trump, and the Fight for Harvard’s Future

Introducing a guide to the issues, players, and stakes.

Harvard Summer Reading Picks | 2025

The wealth gap, shamanism, the life of David Nathan, and more