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Rema Hanna
Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South-East Asia Studies, Harvard Kennedy School
Rema Hanna is the Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South-East Asia Studies and Director of Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) at the Harvard Kennedy School. Hanna is an NBER Research Associate, and affiliate of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), and an affiliate at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. Her research focuses understanding how to improve public service provision in developing countries. Prior to joining the Kennedy School, she was an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at New York University. She holds a PhD in Economics from MIT and a BS from Cornell University.
Recent work by Rema Hanna
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Designing a public transit network: Evidence from Jakarta, Indonesia
Examining the expansion of Jakarta’s bus system shows how simple improvements in public transport service quality can boost usage
Published 06.12.23
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Food versus vouchers: Evidence from Indonesia
Providing vouchers for rice and eggs allowed for better targeting, increased protein consumption, and was cheaper to administer than in-kind benefits
Published 09.03.22
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Is improving tax administration more effective than raising tax rates? Evidence from Indonesia
Enhanced tax administration can increase government revenue collection from medium-sized firms in developing countries even more than raising tax rates
Published 14.12.20
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Cushioning the effects of COVID-19 on the poor
How can we best protect the most vulnerable in the developing world during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Published 29.04.20
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The challenges of universal health insurance in Indonesia
A large-scale randomised experiment reveals that temporary health insurance subsidies can improve take-up at no additional cost to the government
Published 25.11.19
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Improved cooking stoves in India: Evaluating long-run impacts
The limited impacts of an improved cooking stove programme in India suggest that testing interventions in real-world conditions is important
Published 30.09.19
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New possibilities for cutting corruption in the public sector
Personality tests and psychological profiling offer innovative ways for cutting corruption in the public sector of developing countries
Published 05.12.18
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Jakarta’s maligned congestion-easing policy actually worked
When unpopular anti-congestion policies were abandoned in Indonesia's capital, we discovered flawed policy had been better than no policy
Published 31.10.17
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Implementation ups and downs: Monitoring attendance to improve public services for the poor in India
An attendance-monitoring intervention in schools reduced absenteeism, but the impact on health care workers was limited
Published 14.07.17