Email: moscona@mit.edu

Web: scholar.harvard.edu/moscona

Jacob Moscona is an economist whose work focuses on innovation, economic development, and political economy. He is currently a Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at Harvard and a postdoctoral fellow at J-PAL at MIT.

One stream of his research explores the causes and consequences of technological progress, often with a focus on agriculture and the environment. His work investigates the impact of intellectual property enforcement on technology development and productivity; the responses of technological progress to environmental change and crisis; and how incentives in the global innovation system shape which parts of the world benefit from modern technology, and which are neglected and less productive as a result.

A second stream of his research concentrates on political economy and economic development. Specifically, his papers explore the relationship between extended family organization and conflict, development aid and conflict, labor coercion and wage/production choices, and how differences in local social structure shape financial networks and the impacts of public policy.

Jacob received his PhD in economics from MIT in 2021, where he was a Hausman Fellow, a John Krob Castle Fellow, and a Kenneth and Doreen Wang Fellow. He received his A.B. from Harvard in 2016.