Marek Hlavac
Professional Experience
Social Policy Institute of the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family of the Slovak Republic, Senior Analyst, since 2019 [link]
UWC Adriatic, Economics Teacher and Residence Tutor, 2016 - 2019 [link]
Institute for Financial Policy of the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic, Structural and Expenditures Policies Department, Intern (Labor Mobility Analysis), 2016 [link]
The Brookings Institution, Global Economy and Development, Intern (Research Analyst), 2011 [link]
The World Bank, Development Economics Research Group (DECRG), Consultant (Research Assistant), 2010 [link]
Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, DC), Intern, 2009 [link]
NERA Economic Consulting (White Plains, NY), Research Associate, 2008 - 2009 [link]
Adam Smith Institute (London, UK), Research Intern, 2007 [link]
Transparency International (Bratislava, Slovakia), Intern, 2006 [link]
Education
Ph.D., Political Economy and Government, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University, 2017 [link]
Dissertation: "Essays in Political Economy"
MPP, Master of Public Policy in International Policy and Development, Georgetown University, McCourt School of Public Policy, 2011 [link]
A.B. in Economics, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, Princeton University, 2008 [link]
Halbert White’72 Prize in Economics for the best economics student in the Class of 2008
Wolf Balleisen Memorial Prize for the best senior thesis on an economics subject
International Baccalaureate (43/45), UWC Adriatic (Duino-Trieste, Italy), 2004 [link]
Additional Education (Courses and Certificates)
Textual Analysis and Machine Learning with Applications to Economics and Finance, National Bank of Slovakia, June 2023 [link]
Business Education for Scholars and Teachers, Harvard Business School, January 2016 [link]
Summer Institute on the History of Economics, Duke University, June 2014 [link] [certificate]
Professional Certificate in U.S. Law and Methodologies, New York University, June 2009 [link]
Coursework in Marketing, London School of Economics and Political Science, Summer 2006 [link]
Summer Institute of Hispanic Studies, Universidad de Leon (Leon, Spain), Summer 2005 [link]
Teaching Experience
Principal Instructor:
International Baccalaureate (IB) Economics, UWC Adriatic, August 2016 - March 2019 [link]
Principles of Microeconomics for Mid-Career Master of Public Administration Students, Harvard University, multiple summers since 2013 [link]
Nobel Prize-Winning Contributions to Economics (undergraduate tutorial), Harvard University
Up-to-date online version: [course website]
Examples of past syllabi: Spring 2015 [syllabus], Spring 2013 [syllabus]
Awarded the Certificate of Excellence and Distinction in Teaching by the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard
Beginners' Slovak, Global Language Network, Washington, D.C., Spring 2011 [link] [Lesson Overview]
Teaching Assistant:
The Future of Globalization: Issues, Actors and Decisions (Master's level, Prof. Lawrence Summers and Robert Lawrence), Harvard University, Fall 2015
Political Economics (undergraduate, Prof. Andrei Shleifer), Harvard University, Spring 2014 and 2015
Awarded the Certificate of Excellence and Distinction in Teaching by the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard
Markets and Market Failures (Master's level, Prof. George Borjas), Harvard University, Fall 2013, 2014 and 2015 [website]
Awarded the Harvard Kennedy School Dean's Award for Excellence in Student Teaching
Advanced Regression and Program Evaluation Methods for Policy Analysis (Master's level, Prof. Michael Bailey), Georgetown University, Fall 2010
Macroeconomics (Master's level, Prof. Jeffrey Rohaly), Georgetown University, Spring 2011
Research
Selected Publications, Theses and Papers:
"Is Slovakia Still Converging to Richer EU Countries in GDP per Capita at Purchasing Power Parity?", Social Policy Institute, 2023 [link]
"'Right' Choice: Restorative Nationalism and Right-Wing Populism in Central and Eastern Europe," Chinese Political Science Review, 2017 [link]
"Dimensions of Democracy in Slovakia: The Long View, 1918-2012," September 2016 [link]
"Performance of political parties in the 2016 parliamentary election in Slovakia: regional comparisons and district-level determinants", Regional and Federal Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3, April 2016 [link]
"ExtremeBounds: Extreme Bounds Analysis in R," Journal of Statistical Software, Vol. 72, August 2016 [pdf]
"TableMaker: An Excel Macro for Publication-Quality Tables", Journal of Statistical Software, Vol. 70, April 2016. [link] [pdf]
"oaxaca: Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition in R" [pdf]
"A Very Uneven Road: US Labor Markets in the Past 30 Years," with Harry J. Holzer [bio], in Diversity and Disparities, America Enters a New Century (Ed. John Logan) [link], Russell Sage Foundation: New York, 2014 [chapter pdf]
"An Uneven Road, Then A Cliff: U.S. Labor Markets, 2000-2010," with Harry J. Holzer [bio], [report pdf]
"Political Ideology and Individual-Level Attitudes Towards Immigration in the European Union: Evidence from the European Values Study, 2008/2009," Master's Thesis, Georgetown University, Georgetown Public Policy Institute [SSRN] [summary maps and tables]
"Fundamental Tax Reform: The Growth and Utility Effects of a Revenue-Neutral Flat Tax," Undergraduate Thesis, Princeton University, Dept. of Economics, April 2008 [SSRN]
"Open Access for UK Schools: What Britain Can Learn from Swedish Education Reform," report, Adam Smith Institute, 2007 [pdf]
Software
stargazer - an R package that creates LaTeX code for well-formatted regression and summary statistics tables [link]
ExtremeBounds - an R package that performs Extreme Bounds Analysis [link]
oaxaca - an R package that performs Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions [link]
TableMaker - a user-friendly interface to create Excel tables [download here] - Note: enable Excel macros when opening
Hangman [for STATA] [for R] - an adaptation of the classic paper and pencil game; one of the first computer games ever written for these statistical programming languages
Data Sets
Slovak Election Data Project: [link]
results of Slovak parliamentary and presidential elections in format suitable for statistical analysis
Short-Term Projects
Stanford U.S.-Russia Forum, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA and Moscow, Russia, Fall 2012 - Spring 2013 [link]
United Nations Association of the National Capital Area (Washington, DC), Graduate Fellow, Fall 2010 [link]
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (Washington, DC), short-term consulting project (municipal clean energy), Fall 2009 [link]
Conferences and Presentations
Young Economists' Meeting 2017, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, May 2017 [link]
St. Gallen Symposium, St. Gallen University, Switzerland, May 2015 [link]
Young Economists' Meeting 2015, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, May 2015 [link]
Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia, May 2015 [link]
Political Economy of International Organizations, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, January 2012 [link]
Bratislava Economic Meeting 2012, Slovak Economic Association, Bratislava, Slovakia, June 2012 [link]
Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM), Fall Research Conference, Washington, DC, November 2011 [link]
European Values Study (EVS) Workshop, Vilnius University, Faculty of Philosophy, Vilnius, Lithuania, June-July 2011 [link]
Technical University of Košice, Faculty of Economics, Košice, Slovakia, June 2011 [link]
US2010 Census Project Workshop, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, NY, May 2011 [link]
Professional Associations and Other Affiliations
Research Fellow, Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI), Bratislava, Slovakia, from August 2015 until March 2024 [link]
Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project, Country Expert (Slovakia), University of Notre Dame (USA) / Boston University (USA) / University of Gothenburg (Sweden) / Lund University (Sweden), since 2013 [link]
Senior Common Room, Leverett House, Harvard University, since 2013 [link]
Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS), Harvard University, affiliated graduate student, 2012-2017 [link]
Service
LEAF, TalentGuide, mentoring for talented Slovak high school students, 2014 - 2017 [link]
Harvard University, Leverett House, Resident Tutor, August 2013 - May 2016 [link]
Harvard University, Department of Government, Concentration Advisor, Fall 2013 - May 2016 [link]
Reviewer for the following academic journals: