Gordon Hanson

Gordon Hanson is the Peter Wertheim Professor in Urban Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He is also Chair of the Social and Urban Policy Area at HKS, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is past co-editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Journal of Development Economics. Hanson received his PhD in economics from MIT in 1992 and his BA in economics from Occidental College in 1986. Prior to joining Harvard in 2020, he held the Pacific Economic Cooperation Chair in International Economic Relations at UC San Diego, where he was founding director of the Center on Global Transformation. Hanson previously served on the economics faculties of the University of Michigan and the University of Texas. In his scholarship, Hanson studies the labor market consequences of globalization. He has published extensively in top economics journals, is widely cited for his research by scholars from across the social sciences and is frequently quoted in major media outlets. Hanson’s current research addresses how the China trade shock has affected US local labor markets, the causes and consequences of international migration, and the origins of regional economic divides.

Education

• Ph.D., Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992
• A.B., Economics, Occidental College, 1986

Selected Publications

Academic Journal/Scholarly Articles

• Dorn, David, Gordon Hanson, and Kaveh Majlesi. "Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure." American Economic Review 110.10 (October 2020): 3139-3183.
• Autor, David, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson, Gary Pisano, and Pian Shu. "Foreign Competition and Domestic Innovation: Evidence from US Patents." American Economic Review: Insights 2.3 (September 2020): 357-374.
• Burstein, Ariel, Gordon Hanson, Lin Tian, and Jonathan Vogel. "Tradability and the Labor-Market Impact of Immigration: Theory and Evidence From the United States." Econometrica 88.3 (May 2020): 1071-1112.
• Hanson, Gordon. "The impacts of the U.S.-China trade war." Business Economics 55 (February 2020): 69–72.

HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series

• Hanson, Gordon H., and Chen Liu. "Immigration and Occupational Comparative Advantage." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP21-029, November 2021.
• Autor, David, David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson. "On the Persistence of the China Shock." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP21-028, November 2021.
• Hanson, Gordon. "Immigration and Regional Specialization in AI." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP21-015, May 2021.
• Hanson, Gordon. "Who Will Fill China’s Shoes? The Global Evolution of Labor-Intensive Manufacturing." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP21-014, May 2021.