MPA-DP Seminar: Karla Hoff

Karla Hoff is a Visiting Professor at Columbia University and was a lead economist at the World Bank before 2020.  She co-directed the Bank’s World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior, which provided a framework for the emerging field of behavioral development economics.  She has been investigating how social constructs, such as categories and narratives, affect perception, performance, and solidarity, with applications to inequality, coordination in games, and domestic violence.  She is an Associate Editor of The World Bank Economic Review and co-edited The Economics of Rural Organization and Poverty Traps. She was a National Merit Scholar at Wellesley College and a Peace Corps volunteer in the Ivory Coast.  She earned a PhD in economics at Princeton University.