Kris Hartley

Lecturer in City and Regional Planning, Cornell University

Kris Hartley is a Lecturer in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University, where he teaches quantitative methods and public sector economics. He is also a Faculty Fellow at Cornell’s Atkinson Center and a Nonresident Fellow for Global Cities at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He holds research appointments at the Center for New Structural Economics at Peking University, the Institute of Water Policy at National University of Singapore, and the Center for Government Competitiveness at Seoul National University. In the past four years Kris has held academic appointments throughout Asia, including Visiting Researcher at the University of Hong Kong, Visiting Lecturer in economics at Vietnam National University, Visiting Researcher at Seoul National University, Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the Philippines, and research and teaching assistant at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Kris focuses on economic policy, urban planning, and environmental management.

With over a decade of public and private sector experience, Kris has worked with central and local government agencies in the United States, New Zealand, and Thailand, research institutes in Japan, China, South Korea, and Singapore, and community development corporations in California. He has consulted on a variety of topics including urban growth strategies, transport planning, earthquake recovery, and infrastructure asset management. Kris is currently engaged in research about domestic resource mobilization and growth governance in Africa (through the Center for New Structural Economics at Peking University), climate change adaptation in Hong Kong and southern China (through the Institute of Water Policy at National University of Singapore), and ASEAN economic integration. His projects are connected by the overarching theme of new public policy models for the 21st century.

Kris’s first book, entitled Can Government Think? Flexible Economic Opportunism and the Pursuit of Global Competitiveness (Routledge 2014), addresses innovative economic policy and institutional reform through a variety of international cases. His second book, co-authored with NUS Associate Professor Vu Ming Khuong, is forthcoming (Edward Elgar Publishing 2016) and addresses drivers of economic growth in ASEAN countries. Kris has also authored over 80 press articles and commentaries appearing in publications such as the The Diplomat, The Business Times, Bangkok Post, and China Daily, and he regularly delivers presentations at academic conferences around the world.

Kris received a B.A. in classics (Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of Tennessee, an M.B.A. from Baylor University, a Master of City Planning from the University of California–Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the National University of Singapore.