“Jeff has been personally responsible for some of the best things that have happened at Harvard in the field of development in the last five years or so,” said Rodrik.

Sachs is also responsible for the creation of a major new two-year Master’s of Public Administration (MPA) in International Development.

The departure of Sachs, who is one of Harvard’s most renowned economists, is a blow to the prestige of the Harvard department—and led some students in the department to consider switching schools with him.

“It made me think about Columbia for graduate school,” said Lucy Stackpool-Moore ’02. “The addition of Sachs to the faculty makes the school even more enticing.”

But Baker Professor of Economics Martin Feldstein said that while Sachs’ move stemmed from a desire for professional advancement, the level of his students would suffer as a result.

“[Sachs] will not be able to attract the quality of graduate and undergraduate and undergraduate students that we have at Harvard,” he wrote an e-mail yesterday.

—Staff writer Anat Maytal can be reached at maytal@fas.harvard.edu