Reshmaan Hussam

Reshmaan Hussam is an assistant professor of business administration in the Business, Government and International Economy Unit, teaching the Business, Government and International Economy course to MBA students. Her research explores questions at the intersection of development, behavioral, and health economics. Considering the puzzle of the ubiquitously low adoption of many low cost, high return goods, behaviors, and technologies in the developing world, she explores the role of learning and habit formation in sustained behavioral change. She also examines how to utilize community information to optimally allocate capital to microentrepreneurs as well as how digitization of financial services impacts financial inclusion in resource-poor settings. Her most recent work engages refugee populations including the Rohingya of Myanmar, estimating the costs of forced idleness on psychosocial wellbeing and documenting refugee preferences for repatriation, integration, and resettlement.

Prior to joining HBS, Professor Hussam was a postdoctoral fellow at the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. She received her SB and PhD in economics from MIT.

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2010 — 2016)
• Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2005 — 2009)

Companies

• Assistant Professor Harvard Business School (2017)
• Post Doctoral Associate Yale University, Economic Growth Center (2015 — 2017)
• PhD in Economics Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (2010 — 2015)