Joseph Melkonian

Joseph Melkonian is a fifth year Public Policy PhD student at the Harvard Kennedy School whose research focuses on economic development and migration, particularly in the North African context. Joseph’s personal experience growing up between Morocco and California shaped his research interests and nurtured a love of couscous and cross-cultural environments. In addition to dissertation research projects on modern migration to Europe and historic minorities in North Africa, he has assisted Gordon Hanson and Enrico Moretti in their analysis of the evolution of regional US labor markets for the Reimagining the Economy Project. Earlier in his PhD he assisted the Morocco Employment Lab, a JPAL/EPOD affiliate directed by Professor Rema Hanna, in analyzing household survey data on labor market conditions, and studied Moroccan Darija in Rabat through a FLAS scholarship. Joseph enjoys helping students learn economics and has served as a teaching fellow for intermediate microeconomics and econometrics courses at the College, and has taught a sophomore tutorial on migration in the Middle East and North Africa. Before coming to Harvard, Joseph majored in economics and international relations at UC Davis and worked for two years as a research assistant at the Chicago Fed. Joseph enjoys biking, the outdoors, and getting lost in libraries.