Anders Jensen is a Research Programme Director for the IGC State research programme.
He is an Associate Professor in the Kennedy School at Harvard University.
Anders focuses on public economics and development economics. One line of his work examines the factors that shape tax capacity and the evolution of tax policy over the long run of development. This research seeks to shed light on how governments can transition from raising 5–10 percent of GDP in taxes to around 35–40 percent, while simultaneously fostering broader development.
A second strand of his research involves close collaborations with tax authorities and government departments in developing countries. Using large micro-datasets and working within the specific institutional and policy contexts of each country, these projects explore what governments can do—given constrained tax capacity—to incrementally improve tax administration, enforcement, policy design, and tax morale. In this area, he is currently collaborating with governments in Ghana, Zambia, Liberia, and Brazil.
He received his PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics in 2016 and spent one year at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) as a postdoctoral fellow before joining the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and an International Research Associate at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
