About

Christopher Norio Avery is a member of the Faculty of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education and holds the title of Roy E. Larsen Professor of Public Policy. His research focuses on rating and selection mechanisms, particularly within the college admissions system. He has authored the book "The Early Admissions Game," coauthored with Andrew Fairbanks and Richard Zeckhauser, which was published by Harvard University Press in March 2003. His current research examines college application patterns and college enrollment choices for high school students. Avery completed a Ph.D. in economic analysis at Stanford Business School and holds prior degrees from Harvard and Cambridge universities. His sponsored projects include evaluating Covid-19 recovery efforts in the Los Angeles Community College District, where he studies the impact of online and hybrid course modalities on psychosocial and academic outcomes for students, aiming to develop supports that improve academic success.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Economics
• Environmental health
• Political Science
• Macroeconomics
• Socioeconomics
• Virology
• Econometrics

Selected publications

• Navigating complex waters: Designing a process for the development of the National Climate Assessment

  Climatic Change · 2025-03-01 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Scientific assessments are tools used to look across a broad body of knowledge and draw overarching conclusions about the state of the science. They allow experts to synthesize technical knowledge and develop broad understanding of observed and future trends, risks, and opportunities. The National Climate Assessment (NCA), a major climate report of the United States (U.S.) Government, is one such assessment report. The NCA was created by Congressional statute and is classified as a Highly Influential Scientific Assessment, which results in a wide range of obligations, as well as required compliance with various statutes and other federal policies and procedures. The NCA also represents a unique effort to bring together federal agencies, the scientific community, and users of climate science throughout the U.S. to empower decision-making, build consensus, and drive climate actions. Innovations in the NCA development process over multiple cycles of the report’s development were implemented to meet both evolving legal requirements and user needs are described in this paper to share institutional knowledge and best practices with those assessment developers who might be navigating similarly complex constraints. This paper seeks to summarize that history and draw out some valuable lessons for future interagency assessment development teams. A discussion of critical innovations, including expansion of technical resources, knowledge bases, and communication tools, is included to inform the development process of future scientific assessments.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Innovations in the climate assessment development process

  Climatic Change · 2025-10-01 · 1 citations

  editorialOpen access

  Climate assessments have long been key scientific inputs that inform the development of productive and impactful climate policy in the United States and around the world. This introduction sets the stage for the suite of papers in the Topical Collection "Advancements in U.S. Climate Assessments." Inspired and informed by the release of the Fifth National Climate Assessment, the papers within this issue document lessons learned over the past 30+ years and leverage the perspectives of previous assessment authors and staff to aid those interested in developing their own climate assessments. This paper reviews the evolution of climate assessments and the factors that make for useful, usable, and used scientific products to support societal choices. Evolving user needs over the last 30+ years also reflect a shift in demand towards more localized or more context-specific climate data that integrates social science information, tools, and frameworks. To meet these needs, we highlight three areas of potential opportunity and challenge for future assessments: continued and strengthened conversations between assessment developers across geographic scale to share innovations and lessons learned in the development process; working with knowledge holders in under-represented areas of expertise to alter assessment governance and guidelines to better incorporate diverse perspectives; and seizing opportunities for using innovative communication and engagement mediums.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The economics of epidemics: introduction to the special issue, part two

  Review of Economic Design · 2025-02-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Test-Optional College Admissions: ACT and SAT Scores, Applications, and Enrollment Changes

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Algorithm Advantage: Ranked Application Systems Outperform Decentralized and Common Applications in Boston and Beyond

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Analysis of nature-related themes and terminology in U.S. climate assessments

  Climatic Change · 2025-04-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract “Nature” is a broad term with neither a standard definition nor consistent use, even across federal reports like the National Climate Assessment (NCA). The process of defining complex topics like “nature” is difficult given the broad range in people’s understandings of and relationships with the natural world. To support the development of future nature assessments and NCAs, we analyzed use of nature-related words and themes over time in all five published NCAs and one preliminary draft of NCA5. Overall, despite the prevalence of nature-related topics, we found the term “nature” was not used as much as others like “ecosystems,” though “nature-based solutions” appeared more in the latest NCA (NCA5) compared to earlier NCAs. Additionally, the scope of nature-related chapters in NCAs has evolved from initially focusing on impacts of climate change on ecosystems and ecosystem services towards highlighting solutions that nature can provide and implications for human well-being and environmental justice. We suggest improving the consistency of nature-related terms and topics within future climate and nature assessments to help promote dialogues across disciplines, reports, and assessment chapters, allowing researchers to better tackle multifaceted issues of global change. However, broad standardization of nature-related language may unnecessarily constrict the diverse understandings of nature. Definitions of nature-related terms should be revisited and adapted based on changing views and realities as global changes evolve.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks

  2025-08-05 · 3 citations

  preprintOpen access

  In September of 1998 the Judicial Conference abandoned its most recent attempt to regulate the timing of interviews and offers in the process for hiring federal judicial law clerks. In September of 1999 most prominent law schools abandoned or cut back their attempts to regulate the time at which faculty recommendation letters could be sent. Thus, the law clerk hiring process now gets underway at the beginning of the second year of law school, roughly two years before the clerkship positions themselves would begin.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Algorithm Advantage: Ranked Application Systems Outperform Decentralized and Common Applications in Boston and Beyond

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-09-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  School choice systems increasingly use common applications, where students can apply to multiple schools on a single form, though schools make admission decisions independently.We model three application systems: a common application, a decentralized system with costly separate applications, and a ranked-choice system using a matching algorithm.Our model shows that while a common application may expand access, it increases competition and may produce worse matches than a decentralized system where application costs encourage more selective applications.Ranked-choice systems combine reduced application costs with preference-based matching that reduce mismatches.We examine these predictions by analyzing how Boston's charter school sector was affected when it adopted an online common application.Counterfactual simulations suggest the common application performs no better than alternatives on several metrics and did little to increase access for disadvantaged groups.A ranked system consistently outperforms a common application across various levels of competition and assumptions on preference stability between application and enrollment stages.

  PublisherDOI

• Test-Optional College Admissions: ACT and SAT Scores, Applications, and Enrollment Changes

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-09-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The New Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks

  2025-08-05

  preprintOpen access

  As the new millennium dawned, the market for federal judicial law clerks was in a state of near crisis. The final two clerkship applicants and federal appellate judge quoted above, as well as many others like them, expressed deep and wide-ranging concerns with the functioning of this market in 1998-2000. In an attempt to gain some control of the market, in March of 2002 a group of prominent federal appellate judges organized a one-year moratorium on the hiring of federal judicial law clerks; federal judges were requested to skip hiring entirely in 2002 and were then to resume hiring in the fall of 2003, with the primary pool of candidates the third-year law students who under past practice would have been hired as second-year students in the fall of 2002. Likewise, in subsequent years judges were to hire students during the fall of their third year of law school. This new system for the hiring of clerks is presently structured around a set of "start dates" for the transmission of applications, the scheduling and conducting of interviews, and the making of offers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Richard Zeckhauser

  Harvard University Press

  19 shared

• Caroline Hoxby

  17 shared

• Richard A. Posner

  15 shared

• Judith A. Chevalier

  University of Nevada, Las Vegas

  14 shared

• Michael Hurwitz

  College Board

  14 shared

• Christine Jolls

  13 shared

• Samantha Basile

  ICF International (United States)

  11 shared

• Jonathan Smith

  10 shared

Labs

• Harvard Graduate School of EducationPI

Education

• Graduate Certificate, STPP, Public Policy

  University of Michigan

  2010

• Ph.D., Chemistry

  University of Michigan

  2010

• Masters, Chemistry

  University of Michigan

  2008

• Bachelors, Chemistry

  Hope College

  2005

• International Exchange Student

  University of Queensland

  2003