Population, Migration, and Public Policy
American Foreign and National Security Policy
Economic Policy
Energy and Environmental Policy
Population, Migration, and Public Policy
Students working the field of population, migration and public policy study how changes in the movement and composition of populations create challenges for public policy, and seek to develop creative and effective solutions. These challenges include responding to marked changes in the volume and sources of immigration; adjusting to how internal and international migration shape labor markets, politics, and identities; coping with changes in the age structure of society and how that affects the costs and demands for pensions, health care and social services, as well as the nature of work and cross-generational social contracts; understanding how shifting ethnic composition impacts social and political cohesion and conflict; and devising functional national and international legal frameworks to govern international migration and asylum. Students working in this area are eligible for five-year funding for their PhD studies and research. They will be prepared for careers in an increasingly vital field, with job opportunities in government, the private sector, academia, NGOs and international organizations.
Affiliated Faculty
Justin Gest
Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera
Eric Max Mcglinchey
Jack Goldstone
Sita Slavov
American Foreign and National Security Policy
Faculty and students in the Schar School interested in American foreign and national security policy come to the School from a wide range of academic and applied settings. Research efforts focus both on critical international and transnational issues facing America and the world – for example, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, energy security, interstate conflict, and the emergence of new potential threats and adversaries – and on the challenges of policy-making itself. Employing a broad set of historical and social scientific research approaches and methods, Schar School research examines the functioning of executive branch, legislative branch, private-sector, and international institutions, and explores the role of political, economic, cultural, and intellectual pressures and constraints in determining options and outcomes. Degree recipients pursue careers not only in academic and research settings, but in U.S. government, business and consulting, and non-profit sectors.
Affiliated Faculty
Colin Dueck
Michael Hunzeker
Jerry Mayer
Edward Rhodes
A. Trevor Thrall
Economic Policy
The economic policy area emphasizes the application of economic theory and econometrics to analyzing a wide variety of public policy issues. Course offerings build from the PhD core and include both more advanced methods and various applied fields of economics. Topics included in this area include employment, inequality, taxes, retirement, health, entrepreneurship, poverty, development, productivity, international trade and investment, and all the public policies relevant to these issues, both in the U.S. and in other countries.
Affiliated Faculty
Ken Button
John Earle
Maurice Kugler
Anh Pham
Ken Reinert
Sita Slavov
Energy and Environmental Policy
Students pursuing the energy and environmental policy field of study investigate how public policy and governance more generally shape the extraction, transformation, exchange, and consumption of natural resources and how these activities, in turn, impact human and natural systems, including attempts at creating sustainable policy instruments and governance that enable conservation, preservation, or restoration, of those resources. The specialization also focuses on corruption and illicit trade in natural resources. Energy and environmental policy is made at multiple levels of governance, from local to global, in every corner of the world, all of which lie within the scope of this field of study. Students develop a diverse, interdisciplinary tool kit with which to carry out analyses of energy and environmental policy formation, implementation, and impact and the conditions that may also lead to the abuse of these natural resources. They learn to employ both quantitative and qualitative methods and draw on analytical traditions in political science, economics, public administration, sociology, and others, with the capacity to enhance these traditions through normative analysis. This knowledge base and the original work carried out for the dissertation provide a foundation to pursue energy and environmental policy research careers in academia, government, non-governmental organizations, and business
Affiliated Faculty
James Conant
Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera
David Hart
Todd LaPorte
Andrew Light
Jessica Terman