GSPP Faculty
Michael O'Hare
Areas of Expertise/Interest:
- Arts Policy
- Environmental Policy
- Public Management
- Quantitative Methods
Blog
Biographical Statement:
Michael O’Hare was raised in New York (and uses the term, correctly, to mean New York County) and trained at Harvard as an architect and structural engineer. Diverted early on from an honest career designing buildings by the offer of a job in which he could think about anything he wanted to and spend his time with very smart and curious young people, he fell among economists and such like, and continues to benefit from their patience with his demands for continuing on-the-job social science training.
He has followed the process and principles of design into “nonphysical environments” such as production processes in organizations, regulation, and information management and published a variety of research in environmental policy, government policy towards the arts, and management, with special interests in tax policy, facility siting, information and perceptions in public choice and work environments, and policy design. His current research is focused on biofuels for transportation and global warming, secondarily on pricing and revenue models for music and other digital media, and accounting practices in museums. He is also a regular writer on pedagogy, especially teaching in professional education, and co-edited the “Curriculum and Case Notes” section of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.
Between faculty appointments at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, he was director of policy analysis at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. He teaches occasionally at Università Bocconi in Milan and the National University of Singapore and regularly in the Goldman School’s executive (mid-career) programs. He is a faculty affiliate of the Energy and Resources Group.
At GSPP, O’Hare has taught a studio course in Program and Policy Design, Arts and Cultural Policy, Public Management, Quantitative Methods, Environmental Policy, and the school’s introduction to public policy for its undergraduate minor, which he supervises. Generally, he considers himself the school’s resident expert in any subject in which there is no such thing as real expertise (a recent project concerned the governance and design of California county fairs), but is secure in the distinction of being the only faculty member with a metal lathe in his basement and a 4x5 Ebony view camera. At the moment, he would rather be making something with his hands than writing this blurb.
