Donald J. Harris

Donald Jasper Harris OM (born August 23, 1938) is a Jamaican-American economist and emeritus professor at Stanford University, known for applying post-Keynesian ideas to development economics. He was a scholar granted tenure in the Stanford Department of Economics, and he is the father of Kamala Harris, the 49th vice president of the United States and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, and of Maya Harris, a lawyer, advocate and writer.

Harris was raised in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica, earning a bachelor's degree from the University College of the West Indies and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He held professorships at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University, and University of Wisconsin-Madison before joining Stanford University as professor of economics.

Harris's 1978 book Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution critiques mainstream economic theories, using mathematical modeling to propose an alternative model for thinking about the effects of capital accumulation on income inequality, economic growth, instability, and other phenomena. He has worked extensively on analysis and policy regarding the economy of Jamaica. He served in Jamaica, at various times, as economic policy consultant to the government and as economic adviser to successive prime ministers. In 2021, he was awarded Jamaica's Order of Merit, the country's third-highest national honor, for his "contribution to national development".

Donald Jasper Harris was born in Brown's Town, St. Ann Parish, Jamaica, the son of Oscar Joseph Harris and Beryl Finegan, who were Afro-Jamaicans. As a child, Harris learned the catechism, was baptized and confirmed in the Anglican Church, and served as an acolyte.

Harris's paternal grandmother, born Christiana Brown, told Harris that she was descended from Irish-born plantation owner Hamilton Brown (1776–1843), who founded the local Anglican Church where her final resting place is.

Harris grew up in the Orange Hill area of Saint Ann Parish, near Brown's Town and graduated from Titchfield High School in Port Antonio. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University College of the West Indies (then part of the University of London) in 1960, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966. His doctoral dissertation, Inflation, Capital Accumulation and Economic Growth: A Theoretical and Numerical Analysis, was supervised by econometrician Daniel McFadden.

Harris was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1966 to 1967 and at Northwestern University from 1967 to 1968. He moved to the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an associate professor in 1968. In 1972, he joined the faculty of Stanford University as a professor of economics, and became the first black scholar to be granted tenure in Stanford's Department of Economics. At various times, he was a visiting fellow in Cambridge University and Delhi School of Economics; and visiting professor at Yale University. He served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Economic Literature and the journal Social and Economic Studies. He is a longtime member of the American Economic Association.

Harris directed the Consortium Graduate School of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies in 1986–1987, and he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Brasília in 1990 and 1991, and in Mexico in 1992. In 1998, he retired from Stanford, becoming a professor emeritus.