Melissa Dell

Melissa Dell
Born	Enid, Oklahoma
Alma mater	Oklahoma Bible Academy Harvard College Oxford University Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Awards	Truman Scholarship, 2004 Rhodes Scholarship, 2005 Sloan Fellowship, 2016 Carnegie Fellowship, 2017 Calvó-Armengol International Prize, 2018 Elaine Bennett Research Prize, 2018
Scientific career
Fields	Economics
Institutions	Harvard University
Doctoral advisors	Daron Acemoglu
Website	https://scholar.harvard.edu/dell/home

Melissa Dell is an economist and Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Her research interests include development economics, political economy, and economic history.

In 2014, the IMF named Dell among the 25 Brightest Young Economist. In 2018, she was awarded the Elaine Bennett Research Prize and The Economist named her one of "the decade’s eight best young economists."

Biography

Dell grew up in Enid, Oklahoma, where she attended Oklahoma Bible Academy. Despite difficulties completing races because of her poor eyesight, she was a champion long distance runner in high school, setting a state record in the 3000-meter distance. She was the first student from her high school to attend Harvard University, and established an organization, "College Matters," and a book, "The College Matters Guide to Getting Into the Elite College of Your Dreams," to offer practical advice to ambitious students from similar backgrounds.

She graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 2005 (B.A. economics) and attended the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar receiving a M.Phil. in economics in 2007. In 2012, she completed her Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was a junior member of the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2012 to 2014, and joined the faculty at Harvard in 2014. She got promoted to tenure in 2018.

Research

Historic roots of inequality, role of primary schooling, impact of war on development.

Selected works

• Dell, Melissa. "The persistent effects of Peru's mining mita." Econometrica 78, no. 6 (2010): 1863-1903.
• Dell, Melissa, Benjamin F. Jones, and Benjamin A. Olken. "Temperature shocks and economic growth: Evidence from the last half century." American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 4, no. 3 (2012): 66-95.
• Dell, Melissa, Benjamin F. Jones, and Benjamin A. Olken. "What do we learn from the weather? The new climate-economy literature." Journal of Economic Literature 52, no. 3 (2014): 740-98.
• Dell, Melissa. "Trafficking networks and the Mexican drug war." American Economic Review 105, no. 6 (2015): 1738-79.
• Dell, Melissa, and Pablo Querubin. "Nation building through foreign intervention: Evidence from discontinuities in military strategies." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133, no. 2 (2017): 701-764.