Edward L. Glaeser, the Harvard professor whose eclectic research pursuits have placed him on the cutting edge of microeconomics, will become co-director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Kennedy School this fall.

Glaeser “brings tremendous brilliance and fresh energy to the center,” said Alan Altshuler, who has directed the center since its founding 16 years ago.

The two men will share director duties next academic year as part of a “transition arrangement,” said Altshuer, who will step down from his administrative post next spring but will remain at Harvard as Stanton professor of urban policy and planning.

Meanwhile, Glaeser—who teaches the fall semester course Economics 1011a, “Microeconomic Theory”—will continue to instruct undergraduates at the College.

“Teaching 1011a is one of the great joys in my life and I am not about to allow anything to get in the way of my teaching,” he said.

Glaeser will also serve alongside Altshuler as co-faculty director of the Kennedy School’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.

Glaeser, who came to Harvard in 1992 with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton and a doctorate from the University of Chicago, has immersed himself in the study of metropolitan Boston.

“Boston has over a 400-year continually reinvented itself,” said Glaeser, author of a forthcoming Journal of Economic Geography article examining the city’s storied history. “At every juncture, skilled people with various forms of human capital wanted to stay in Boston instead of running whenever the city hit an economic snag,” Glaeser said.

But the impact of Glaeser’s work extends far beyond Massachusetts. “He revitalized urban economics to become a dynamic field,” University Chicago Professor Gary S. Becker wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson Saturday. Glaeser “is clearly one of the most creative of all economists,” added Becker, winner of the 1992 Nobel prize in economics.

Glaeser “is the heir to Becker in that he has applied economics to explain all manner of human behavior,” Dartmouth Economist Bruce I. Sacerdote wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

While at the University of Chicago, Glaeser worked as a teaching assistant to Becker, who recalled that Glaeser was the fastest grader he has ever seen.

“Ed has a remarkable ability to think deeply and quickly,” Harvard economist David I. Laibson ’88 wrote in an e-mail yesterday. “He has spectacular intuitions and an uncanny ability to identify the key forces at work in economic systems.”

Glaeser spoke to The Crimson Friday while boarding a plane to Baltimore, which, he said, “is one of those cities with less of a skill base that hasn’t had the kind of turnaround as Boston.” While his Baltimore trip is for nonacademic purposes—Maryland is home to his wife’s family—Glaeser has developed a reputation internationally as a globe-trotting consultant dispensing economic advice to far-flung urban centers.

A BRAINIER BRAVEHEART?

Glaeser’s analysis of economic growth in Glasgow and Edinburgh has made him somewhat of a celebrity in Scotland—four centuries after his mother’s family emigrated from the Highlands.