Applicants are strongly advised to apply for HKS funding, through HIDIF and other sources. In some cases, the host project may offer modest stipends, but this is not guaranteed.

Application deadline is Friday, February 9, 2024, at 11:59 PM Eastern Time; however, we will be reviewing candidates on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible. Prospective candidates are requested to submit the following materials:

• CV
• Cover letter: In your cover letter, please indicate your top choice of projects from among those listed in this packet, detailing in which you have the greatest interest and why. Note that you will still be considered for all positions that Growth Lab application reviewers deem appropriate.
• Writing sample – no longer than two pages.
• First semester transcripts.

Please send your application to growthlab@hks.harvard.edu with the subject line: Growth Lab Summer 2024 Internship: [First and Last Name]. Please clearly list the internship(s) in which you are interested within the body of the email.

The Growth Lab’s ongoing engagement in Azerbaijan are engaged aims at advancing research and evidence-based policy development to achieve outcomes on economic diversification and job creation. After a fifteen-year period of remarkable economic growth driven by the discovery of oil, Azerbaijan is in the midst of a low growth period marked by high volatility in household consumption. The historical driver of economic dynamism—oil revenues that fuel net government spending—has proven unable to sustain growth over the recent period and is a finite resource unable to drive growth in the long-run. The economy currently lacks alternate sources of growth to pick up the slack.

If past growth has been driven by oil and oil cannot continue to do so in the long run, how can the government manage the transition out of oil to create new growth drivers? The Growth Lab will utilize its core research methodologies and capacities to identify economic opportunities to drive new economic diversification as well as the constraints to those opportunities and policy options for the Government of Azerbaijan to drive new job creation. Creating sustainable growth while adjusting to lower oil incomes will require government to seize the window of opportunity to use oil savings to foster new, sustainable growth engines.

Internship Opportunities:
Three to five summer internship roles will be offered to conduct research and policy analysis on central workstreams for the project. Depending on the most pressing needs as well as the intern’s profile, possible areas of focus for the internship(s) include:

• Economic Complexity: Identifying opportunities for productive diversification in Azerbaijan, including dimensions of:
  • Green growth: analyze the industries, supply chains, and markets to supply the world’s decarbonization efforts (as Azerbaijan hosts COP29 in December 2024)
  • Market opportunities: Azerbaijan has a skewed export profile not only in small range of products, but destinations, centered on former Soviet republics; analysis could assess potential of different market opportunities, in joining the WTO, in greater integration with Europe, etc.
  • Traded services: using new datasets to analyze service export opportunities in tourism, transport, finance, etc.
  • Innovation: analyze new datasets beyond production to study scientific discoveries and patents to predict new innovations

• Subnational analysis: Opportunities within Azerbaijan are not uniform, where this analysis will aim to study the different potential of the regions within Azerbaijan for diversification and growth.
  • Prepare diagnostic studies of Azerbaijan’s primary economic regions to evaluate regional constraints and growth potential.
  • Analyze mobility and transportation dynamics within Baku, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of urban economic development.

• Macroeconomic modelling: Managing oil transfers in the context of declining reserves allows for several potential studies on fiscal management; optimal levels of non-oil revenues and revenue sources:
  • Work with the Growth Lab team in macroeconomic modeling, particularly focusing on the strategic management of oil revenue through the Sovereign Wealth Fund to aid diversification.
  • Investigate access to finance, aiming to discern challenges in credit supply and demand within Azerbaijan.
  • Research the interplay between exchange rates and exports, providing insights on how firms have responded to foreign exchange fluctuations.

• Skills, Migration, and Business Networks: If Azerbaijan is to diversify, where will the knowhow come from? The workstream will study opportunities to attract new knowhow to accelerate entry into new economic sectors.
  • Assess the role of the Azerbaijani diaspora in economic development and explore potential avenues for engagement.
  • Develop case studies on successful private sector exporters within the framework of camels and hippos.
  • Examine Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) patterns and constraints within Azerbaijan.
  • Identify skill gaps in the Azerbaijani workforce and investigate how firms are adapting to these challenges.

The Growth Lab is launching a new policy research engagement focusing on economic growth and in Morocco, with a focus on green growth. The project is carried out in collaboration with two local partners: the Africa Business School at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) and the OCP Group, Morocco's government-owned mining and fertilizer firm.

The project's main objectives include: (i) diagnosing the current and/or future constraints to Morocco's economic growth and green growth ambitions and identifying relevant policy solutions; (ii)using Growth Lab methodologies to carry out a knowledge and economic analysis of selectedcurrent large-scale green growth projects in Morocco and charting concrete policy pathways tomaximize their economic development impact.

The following internship opportunities would take place largely or completely in Morocco.

• Green growth, wind and solar energy, and hydrogen/ammonia value chains: Morocco is seeking to capitalize on its wind and solar potential through large projects, including in support of green hydrogen production. One or several intern(s) could support the project team in developing a deep understanding of the technological and economic specificities of one or several green value chains and opportunities and constraints to Moroccan suppliers linking to these projects. Prior technical, analytical or policy experience with the above value chains would be a strong asset.


• Labor markets and constraints to female labor force participation: One or several intern(s) could support the project team's understanding of Morocco's national and/or regional labor market dynamics. Two areas of specific project interest are women's labor market inclusion and green growth jobs. Candidates with prior experience in labor economics and/or expertise in Stata/R/Python will be prioritized.


• Economic complexity and green growth: One or several intern(s) could expand on the team's analyses and explore in more details the economic complexity of Morocco and/or some of its regions and/or economic complexity aspects of ambitious large-scale green growth projects in Morocco. Complexity analyses may leverage production, trade, occupation, or scientific production datasets. Candidates with quantitative skills, including knowledge of linear algebra and/or network science basics will be preferred. Prior knowledge of the Growth Lab's economic complexity framework and its quantitative implementation would be a plus.


• Topical zooms on other key policy areas: Depending on the results of the ongoing growth diagnostics and the candidate's profile, there may be additional opportunities to tailor an internship experience around other policy areas, potentially including challenges in urban development, agriculture in the country.

The internships are expected to be located in Rabat, Morocco. Depending on the topic, some of these opportunities could be fully or partly based in other cities in Morocco as well. If the internship topic requires an exceptional need to collaborate in person with the Cambridge-based Growth Lab team, one or several interns may also work on the Kennedy School campus.

In January 2024, the Growth Lab will start a research project centered on the challenge of productive diversification in the City of Hermosillo in the State of Sonora, Mexico. This project is a continuation of previous work done by the Growth Lab in 2017-2018, which resulted in the publication of a growth diagnostic report on Hermosillo that highlighted constraints to growth and shared inputs for the design of public policies.

This research project aims to apply growth diagnostics and economic complexity methodologies to inform policy design targeted at accelerating economic diversification into new industries, upgrading and diversifying markets of existing industries, and developing stronger economic growth and job creation across the state of Sonora with a focus on the City of Hermosillo. Throughout the project, the Growth Lab will collaborate with local stakeholders from the City of Hermosillo, such as business organizations, Hermosillo ¿Cómo Vamos?, and the municipal government.

The project covers three primary areas of work: (1) an updated growth diagnostic analysis of Hermosillo’s economic challenges, (2) an assessment of the city’s growth and diversification opportunities when it comes to green growth, nearshoring, and knowledge-intensive industries, and (3) capacity building and policy analysis for the development of strategies and institutions aimed at diversification in close collaboration with local counterparts.

Internship Opportunities:

Summer interns will be based in the City of Hermosillo, working closely with the Growth Lab, Hermosillo ¿Cómo Vamos?, the municipal government, and other local agencies and officials. The focus areas will depend on the research project’s needs. Still, they will be related to local capacity building, development policy analysis, industrial policy, and place-based productive development strategies. 

The Growth Lab is collaborating with the State of Wyoming on a multi-year project to better understand and address the state’s economic challenges (Pathways to Prosperity). In late 2022, the team drafted an initial report summarizing the state’s economic and population history and framing a defining growth problem — the composition of Wyoming’s economic activities cannot sustain a high quality of life across all parts of the state.

The work continues with multiple agencies, led by the Wyoming Business Council (WBC), to better understand the various root causes of this growth problem and to identify potential solutions. Collaborative workstreams are actively engaging around several identified binding constraints and their sub-issues:

• Limited access to workforce
• Inelastic housing markets
• Low industrial complexity in the economy
• Changes in the global energy landscape
• Fiscal system structure in resource-reliant systems
• Exceptionally limited access to grants and other mechanisms for funding local economic development
• Encouraging research and development and entrepreneurship in very low-population, target-sparse environments
• Limited capabilities for economic development in rural places

The teams in Wyoming are implementing the PDIA approach (known locally as the “Economic Growth Flywheel”) and the work continues to evolve as they iterate through the process and identify additional challenges and/or opportunities.

Internship Opportunities:
Summer internships will take place in and across Wyoming, with interns working closely with the WBC and other state agencies and local officials. In general, summer internship role(s) will center on helping existing workstreams build capacity and improve on initial approaches to addressing the identified growth challenge topics that are central to the project’s ongoing success. Interns may also assist new workstream efforts to get off the ground and conduct research, data collection, and policy analysis, among other activities. Depending on the most pressing needs, as well as the intern’s profile, possible areas of focus for the internship(s) include:

• Energy: Wyoming has led on energy policy and production for decades, ranking first in the nation for coal production and eighth in both oil and gas production. As an all-of-the-above energy state, Wyoming is actively developing other types of energy and energy technologies, including renewables, carbon capture sequestration and utilization, hydrogen, nuclear, and other technologies. (See Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon’s conversation on Decarbonizing the West at Harvard in October 2023.) At the same time, the energy transition from market forces is driving the diversification of Wyoming’s local economies to include other types of activities, many of which (e.g. data centers) have a very high demand for clean power. Perhaps counterintuitively in an energy-leading state, growth in these diverse activities is constrained by access to power locally. This pair of challenges positions Wyoming at the epicenter of changing energy markets and policies, so understanding other state and national energy policies is critical to shaping Wyoming’s economic future. There is an opportunity for an intern to perform an analysis of these policies focusing on how they may impact current and future Wyoming energy export markets and the availability of power in Wyoming.
   
• Grants: Intern support is needed to build upon foundational work that has taken place through data collection and further developing recommendations based on external best practices and other possible design space solutions. Additional support is needed to help the state and local communities adopt solutions to challenges faced when applying for federal funding. This could include developing methods to track available funding sources and working to build local capacity with team members. Important skills include an understanding of operations and how to implement appropriate strategies.
   
• Workforce: The workforce workstream team has broken into issue-specific groups focused on childcare, out-of-state workers and migration, justice-involved, and higher education with the goal of increasing the available workforce in the state. Support is needed to analyze important topics, including gender and income equality and the rural/urban divide as they apply to workforce issues and constraints. Issue-specific project support, requiring creative thinking and planning skills, may be needed. Interns will regularly attend virtual workstream meetings and provide new findings and project input.
   
• Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA)/Research & Development: The Wyoming team has recently focused efforts on developing potential clusters around Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA), technology, and more broadly research and development. Intern assistance is needed to apply data analytics, research, and creative thinking skills to this new workstream and responsibilities could be focused on the following:
  • Research related to foreign direct investment (FDI) opportunities in Wyoming specifically as it relates to CEA.
  • Support FDI efforts by compiling resources for companies relocating to and investing in Wyoming. This includes financial and legal support options plus determining how these resources should be published and made available to companies.
  • Data analysis to assist with CEA ecosystem mapping, including evaluating incubation and higher education services, and other business resources in Wyoming and the region.
  • Data analysis to identify which product space “trees” Wyoming can jump to, including which ones require an easy jump and which require a strategic jump.
  • Lead-generation analysis to support networking and recruiting efforts.
  • Attend or coordinate virtual business interviews to test workstream hypotheses and provide analysis to the CEA workstream.
     
• Civil Engagement: Nationally, “toxic polarization” and conflict are limiting the ability of individuals, communities, and governments to engage and collaborate in meaningful ways to address major growth challenges. Wyoming is experiencing this division on political, social, and industrial levels like the rest of the country. The WBC is investigating methodologies to encourage “disagreeing better” and working together despite differing perspectives to build amore resilient future and maintain the quality of life we all value. Intern support is needed to get this workstream off the ground which could include help researching and developing appropriate practices to encourage more civil dialog, coordinating efforts with other workstreams, and designing public initiatives to take action and influence change.

Wyoming is a mostly rural state with abundant public land, outdoor recreation, and tourism assets, as well as unique cultural amenities. Fiscally conservative and an energy leader, misconceptions may abound about the state and its culture and politics. These internships are great opportunities for Harvard students to get a firsthand look at how the processes and ideologies of the Growth Lab are being adapted and adopted in real-world situations, and how those efforts are changing mindsets for a more resilient future. See here for blog posts and descriptions from past HKS interns in Wyoming.

The Growth Lab, housed at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Master’s Programs for Development (MpD) at Catholic University of Bolivia (UCB) have a long-standing engagement to strengthen understanding of public policy challenges in Bolivia for which we have an annual Visiting Scholar position. Led by CID Faculty, Dan Levy, the engagement incorporates the research of the Growth Lab program and the curriculum and pedagogy of the Harvard Kennedy School as well as the rest of Harvard. The Visiting Research Scholar project has been designed to generate research about Bolivia´s challenges in terms of public policy solutions leading to sustainable economic growth, entrepreneurship, green growth, local development, and higher levels of equality and welfare, given the current context of economic boom alongside significant dependence on the extractive sector of the economy.

Through the MpD curriculum, UCB has increasingly focused its research, teaching, and outreach efforts on the interrelated themes of local development, entrepreneurship, microfinance, poverty, and social development. The current economic context in Bolivia and most of Latin America, characterized by commodity-driven economy enduring boom and bust cycles has put a research agenda in place that includes (but is not limited to): green growth, behavioral economics, financial inclusion, entrepreneurship, and innovation in Bolivia; and on growth diagnostics in the impact of gas and other commodity revenues on growth and development.

Internship Opportunities:

This year’s Visiting Scholar will lead implementation of a research project of their co-determination with faculty at UCB. The Visiting Scholar will be trained by and work with Harvard Growth Lab researchers in the elaboration of this research at least part of the time from La Paz, Bolivia. While most of the time will be devoted to research, active participation in teaching classes for undergraduate and graduate students along with assisting teaching of workshops, seminars and executive courses offer a unique opportunity to advance teaching skills, as desired by the Scholar. The Visiting Research Scholar position is planned to last for a maximum of 10 weeks to contribute to research and teaching alongside leading faculty at UCB.

Additional Information:

• Fluency in Spanish is not required. Given the bilingual (Spanish/English) nature of theBusiness and Policy School programs, this project offers a tremendous opportunity to strengthen Spanish language skills.


• The Visiting Scholar will report to UCB faculty and the Growth Lab Senior Research Manager, Tim Cheston, to co-define the research and teaching responsibilities.


• The location of the internship is La Paz, Bolivia for at least three weeks, with flexibility over the remaining portion and contingent on university travel policies and travel policies for all countries involved.

The intent of the project is to create means (a database of de facto migration and integration restrictions) that will enable us to test how limiting the global mobility of talent impacts the economic and innovation outcomes of countries, and their native populations more specifically. For this, we use internationally comparable data on bilateral migration (origin-destination), in some specifications aggregated data and in some specifications data at the individual level. Employing state-of-the-art econometric identification strategies, we aim to identify the cross-country variance in migration and the economic integration of migrant talent that has to do with codified and implicit practices at the borders and the labor markets of hosting countries.

Internship Opportunities:
Two internship roles will be offered centering on helping us along the following dimensions:

1. Data processing and analysis (individual-level data on immigrants across many countries in the world) to understand the economic integration of immigrants
2. Validation of measures of migration and integration restrictiveness (understanding why some countries are more restrictive than others).
3. Representation of different measures of global migration in a visual way (possibly helping to develop a visualization tool).

Additional information:

• Some prior knowledge of data processing and evaluation software (Stata, Python) would be helpful
• Some prior knowledge on regression analysis, interest in working on the topic of migration would be helpful
• This opportunity can either be working with us on site or remote

The Growth Lab may be launching new work with select U.S. cities in understanding their constraints to inclusive growth, which may create opportunities for summer internships. Other opportunities focusing on Colombia and Ukraine may also be forthcoming. Students with interest in the Growth Lab’s recent South Africa project are also encouraged to apply as new student opportunities may be available and the Growth Lab team may be able to match interested students with local South African organizations.