Paul William Glewwe (born April 4, 1958) is an economist and Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. His research interests include economic development and growth, the economics of the public sector, and poverty and welfare. He formerly was the Director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy and served as co-chair of the education programme of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).
Biography
Paul Glewwe earned a B.A. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1979 as well as a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1985, the latter with a doctoral thesis analysing labour markets and the distribution of income in Sri Lanka. Already prior to graduation, Glewwe began working as a consultant for the World Bank (1984–85, 86-88), followed by appointments as economist in the World Bank's population and human resources department (1988–93) and as senior economist in its policy research department (1994–99). In parallel, Glewwe worked in various academic positions at Pennsylvania State University, George Washington University and Oxford University. Since 1999, he has worked in the Department of Applied Economics of the University of Minnesota, first as assistant professor (1999-2001), then as associate professor (2001–06), and finally as full professor (since 2006). Moreover, since 2013, Paul Glewwe has held the title of Distinguished McKnight University Professor. In terms of professional service, Glewwe has served on the editorial boards of the World Bank Economic Review (2009-2016), Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy (2008-2019), Journal of African Economies (since 2011), Economics of Education Review (since 2013), and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics (2014-2017). He currently serves as an associate editor of Economic Development and Cultural Change (since 2020). Additionally, he has served as co-chair of the education programme of J-PAL from 2010 to 2014 and as Director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy from 2007 to 2011.
Research
Glewwe's research generally focuses on the economics of education, poverty and inequality in developing countries, and applied econometrics. Overall, Glewwe belongs to the top 2% of most cited economists as ranked by IDEAS/RePEc.
Relationship between health and education
One of Glewwe's main research areas concerns the relationship between health and education. For example, he (with Hanan Jacoby) finds early childhood malnutrition - and not borrowing constraints or the rationing of school places - to be the likely cause of delayed enrollment in primary school in Ghana, and documents (with Jacoby and Elizabeth M. King) how malnutrition among young children in the Philippines impairs their academic achievements by delaying the age at which they enroll into school and causing them to learn more slowly, though not by decreasing their effort exerted at school (in terms of attendance, homework, etc.). Looking into the link between child health and maternal education, Glewwe argues based on evidence from Morocco that mothers' health knowledge, which is generally correlated with (though not necessarily caused by) their schooling, is probably the main pathway how maternal education achieves its strongly positive impact on child health and nutrition in developing countries, which consequently suggests large public health payoffs to female health education in school.