![Rebecca Diamond presenting](/sites/g/files/omnuum5991/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2025-11/25_1103_Diamond%20presenting.jpg?h=9bab95f4&itok=B5lyFTSo) # Full Circle: Rebecca Diamond’s Return to Harvard Economics November 07, 2025 **When Rebecca Diamond took the floor on a recent Monday in November, it was far from business as usual. Though she has presented to Harvard faculty before, this moment carried particular weight—it marked her return to Harvard as an accomplished colleague among many who had once helped in the launch of her academic journey.** Speaking on her work in progress – “The Unequal Effects of Up-Zoning: Evidence from Cook County” (with Zong Huang and Tim McQuade), she explained her findings, including a nominal increase in housing supply despite zoning reform. Her confidence was unwavering as she addressed the Cambridge-based economists who wanted more research to include their locale. “I’m waiting on the data from Cambridge,” she told the crowd. Met with some skepticism, she asserted, “I will get it.” Her academic journey serves as a testament to her research endeavors as well as her skill in data acquisition. More than twenty years ago, Diamond’s summer research assistant job with labor economist Joseph Altonji arguably changed the course of her life. It was that long ago when the Yale undergrad got her first taste of how interesting – and challenging – the study of economics could be. “I did well in a theory-based class taught by Don Brown (Yale University Professor of Economics), but I had no idea about applying data. Joe taught me Stata and how to work with the data,” Diamond explains. “I was planning a degree in physics with a secondary in economics, so even through my senior year at Yale, I did not take any empirical econ classes.” Upon earning her BS in physics, economics and math, Diamond knew she enjoyed quantitative problem-solving, but didn’t know what job she wanted. After one year working in finance, it became clear that she wanted to pursue academia and research. “After that one year, I was much more excited to go back to school,” she says. ![Rebecca Diamond wage gender quote](/sites/g/files/omnuum5991/files/styles/hwp_1_1__960x960_scale/public/2025-11/25_1107-Diamond-pull%20quote%2001.jpg?itok=ZswdMRpl) “Back to school” meant enrolling in the economics PhD program at Harvard. During her graduate studies she work with Ed Glaeser, Larry Katz and Ariel Pakes – among others – and completed the program in 2013. A dozen years later she is back in the Harvard Department of Economics, now working alongside Glaeser, Katz and Pakes as the Martin Feldstein Professor of Economics, leading the way with a variety of her own groundbreaking research and teaching and mentoring her own students. Diamond recently took time to share more about her work and reflect on the path that led her back to Harvard. **Q: You have moved back to the East Coast from Stanford. How have things changed for you?** “Things have not changed too much. I’m doing what I’ve been doing—just from a different location.” Diamond continues to meet with Stanford graduate students who are on the job market. She also is working with four pre-doctoral candidates who sit at Opportunity Insights. And, her research continues—unincumbered by her new locale. **Q: What got you interested in research?** A: “In undergrad I was studying physics because that was what I was good at, and I liked it better than math because it was more about the real world. Then I took an economics class and realized the economics questions were more interesting than physics because they were even more real world applicable.” **Q: What are you working on right now?** A: “I have lots of works in progress right now. One thing I am looking at right now is the number of different housing programs in the U.S. They are super heterogeneous and disjointed. I am focusing on how factors like race, income, and policy affect housing markets, inequality, and individual welfare.” Diamond says she wants to be able to take that information and figure out what works, so that her research can help inform policymakers what should be done to help with the housing crisis and aid in developing effective policy. “I am also working on a couple of very new projects that are refreshing. I enjoy all of my projects, but they are even more exciting at the start when you don’t know what the result is going to be!” ![diamond: spend time thinking about data](/sites/g/files/omnuum5991/files/2025-11/25_1107-Diamond-pull%20quote%2003%20red.jpg) **Q: Speaking of not knowing what the results will be, what have been unexpected elements of your research?** A: “When conducting research on the gender wage gap, using Uber drivers, it was surprising to find that a wage gap existed,” says Diamond. “We looked at the most flexible job, where the pay is formulaic, so gender theories did not exist – there were no negotiations, drivers were paid by trip, and this was pre-tip.” In her paper, [“The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence from over a Million Rideshare Drivers,”]() with Cody Cook, Jonathan Hall, John List, and Paul Oyer, a gender earnings gap of almost 7 percent was identified among drivers. This was entirely explained by factors like experience, preference for work location, and driving speed, rather than discrimination, which suggests that, even in a non-discriminatory environment, flexible work may not necessarily close the gender pay gap. “I was shocked to see a gender wage gap,” she says. “I thought it would be much smaller, and it highlighted how difficult it is to decompose the gender gap.” Another instance of surprising results was her study on food deserts: [“Food Deserts and the Causes of Nutritional Inequality,”](https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/FoodDeserts.pdf) with Hunt Allcott, Jean-Pierre Dubé, Jessie Handbury, Ilya Rahkovsky, and Molly Schnell, suggest that policies focused on subsidizing new grocery stores in underserved areas will have a limited impact on public health. “I had a prior theory that if you live in a neighborhood with less access to fresh food, when you increase the access to fresh food, people will eat healthier,” Diamond explains. “We found there was no adjustment to consuming healthier food when it was available. Some evidence suggests that you need to think about policy that shapes healthy food consumption in kids.” **Q: How does your background impact your work with students?** A: “With PhD students, I try to highlight everything required to get the final results. I want to help them understand what obstacles I have had to overcome to get to a point where I have a final, published project,” she says. “I spend a lot of time talking about data and data access—giving more details on how to find and obtain data” ![diamond: killed projects without data](/sites/g/files/omnuum5991/files/styles/hwp_1_1__960x960_scale/public/2025-11/25_1107-Diamond-pull%20quote%2002_0.jpg?itok=w0fklgs8) **Q: As you think about your work with students, what advice would you give your younger self?** A: “I think coming to terms that nobody knows what they are doing in grad school is helpful. I learned that I needed to try a bunch of ideas to find something that stuck and that people were interested in,” says Diamond. “My job market paper turned out pretty well in the end, but Larry (Katz) helped me find an interesting question to answer. You have to identify a question that is interesting and you have to figure out how to get interesting questions.” Diamond also cautions that students – and researchers – must prepare for setbacks. “I’ve killed projects when I couldn’t get the data. In fact, my initial idea for a job market paper relied on census data, but my application got rejected. Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time finding non-government data sources.” Perhaps her grad school setback explains Diamond’s attention and success with data acquisition, which has been instrumental in her work. Through interaction with students, as well as work with pre-doctoral fellows ([she is hiring for a summer 2026 start ](https://academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15182)to work in Urban and Housing Economics), Diamond’s knowledge and lessons from her journey will undoubtedly continue to benefit the Harvard community. Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)