Rachel Glennerster is a development economist whose research focuses on randomized trials of health, education, microcredit, women’s empowerment, and governance. She helped establish the Deworm the World Initiative, a program that targets increased access to education and improved health for children at risk of intestinal parasites. Ongoing research includes collaborative studies of adolescent empowerment and early marriage in rural Bangladesh, the impact of mass media campaigns on family planning in Burkina Faso, and optimizing the design of incentives for immunization in Karachi.
Her work has been published in Journal of Political Economy, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, PLOS One, Science, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, The Economic Journal, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, National Institute Economic Review, British Medical Journal, and Health Economics. She is co-author of Running Randomized Evaluations: A Practical Guide (Princeton University Press, 2013) and Strong Medicine: Creating Incentives for Pharmaceutical Research on Neglected Diseases (Princeton University Press, 2004).
Glennerster completed a BA in philosophy, politics, and economics at Somerville College, Oxford University. She was a Kennedy Scholar in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, and received an MSc and PhD in economics from Birkbeck College, University of London. Most recently, she was the chief economist in the Department for International Development, United Kingdom. Previously, she was executive director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.