Dina Pomeranz is a Professor at the Department of Economics of the University of Zurich (UZH).
She was previously on the faculty of the Harvard Business School and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at MIT’s Poverty Action Lab, after having obtained her PhD in Economics from Harvard University. She is an affiliated professor at the UBS Center for Economics in Society at UZH, as well as of the Poverty Action Lab, BREAD, CEPR, CESifo and IZA@LISER.
Her research focuses on public policies in developing countries, in particular in the areas of taxation, public procurement, firm development and the environment.
Her work has been published in academic journals including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Journal of Economic Development and the Journal of Human Resources. In 2020, she was elected to the Board of Management of the International Institute of Public Finance (IIPF). In 2026, she was elected to the first Board of Directors of the International Development Economics Association (IDEA).
In 2017, she was awarded one of the prestigious grants from the European Research Council (ERC) for her research on tax evasion and the role of firm networks. In 2023, she was awarded a Consolidator Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (ERC replacement scheme) for research on increasing tax capacity in low-income countries while minimizing the burden on the poor.
As of 2026, she is the Director of Bachelor and Master Studies in Economics at the University of Zurich. At the University of Zurich, she teaches courses on global development, public policy, and impact evaluations (Global Policy Analysis: Poverty, Development, Growth), applied economics for students in the minor in economics (Introduction to Applied Economics), and on heterodox economics (Pluralism in Economics).
At Harvard Business School, she taught entrepreneurship for MBA students.
She is a co-founder of the Graduates Applications International Network (GAIN), which supports prospective students from Africa in applying for graduate school in economics and related fields.
She is the Scientific Director of the Zurich Center of Economic Development which is committed to translate research into practice and build bridges between academia and policy.
More broadly, Dina Pomeranz aims to contribute to the movement towards more evidence-based policy making, both in developing and economically more developed countries. With this goal in mind, she serves on the board or advisory board of a number of organizations committed to translating research into practice, including Helvetas, Policy Analytics, TamTam-Together Against Malaria and IDinsight.
She has also served as an expert witness to the Swiss parliament and is a member of the Swiss Federal Advisory Committee on International Cooperation and the Federal Commission on Migration .
Contact: dina.pomeranz [at] econ.uzh.ch
Twitter: @DinaPomeranz
University of Zurich
Department of Economics
Schönberggasse 1, 8001 Zürich
Room SOF- H14