James Levinsohn

Levinsohn’s fields of expertise are international economics, industrial organization, economic development, and applied econometrics. His recent academic research has focused on estimating the impacts of internal migration on household well-being in South Africa and estimating the demand for sanitation in Bangladesh. He has published widely on trade policy, youth employment policy, and the global corporation.

Levinsohn is the founding Director of Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. In that capacity, he oversees the Global Affairs major in Yale College, the Global Affairs MA programs, and Yale’s World Fellows Program. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has consulted for many government and non-governmental organizations as well as many multinational corporations.

He has served on the editorial boards of the American Economic Review, the Journal of International Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Journal of Economic Literature. Both his teaching and his research have been recognized with major grants and awards.

EDUCATION

• PhD, Princeton University, 1988
• MPA, Princeton University, 1985
• BA, Williams College, 1981

SELECTED ARTICLES

• Fifteen Years On: Household Incomes in South Africa J. Levinsohn and M. Leibbrandt, edited by S. Edwards, S. Johnson, and D. Weil University of Chicago Press Forthcoming
• Encouraging Sanitation Investment in the Developing World: A Cluster-Randomized Trial J. Levinsohn, A.M. Mobarak, and R. Guiteras Science 2015
• Prospective Analysis of a Wage Subsidy for Cape Town Youth J. Levinsohn and T. Pugatch Journal of Development Economics 2014
• HIV Status and Labor Market Participation in South Africa J. Levinsohn, Z. McLaren, O. Shisana, and K. Zuma Review of Economics and Statistics 2013
• Measuring Aggregate Productivity Growth Using Plant-level Data J. Levinsohn and A. Petrin RAND Journal of Economics 2012

SELECTED WORKING PAPERS

• Individual Migration and Household Incomes J. Levinsohn, M. Leibbrandt, and J. Garlick