Rafael Hernandez-Pachon is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Zurich. His research interests include Development Economics, Economics of Education, & Applied Econometrics. He combines administrative data, experiments, & causal inference methods to study various topics, such as how transportation to school impacts primary school children in Bogotá, Colombia, & whether early investments in the education production function make later investments more productive for children in Ecuador. His recent work in Ghana explores social learning & decision-making in the microcredit market, examining how individuals adapt their behavior based on information about others. Before starting his PhD, Rafael worked at the Inter-American Development Bank on projects related to early childhood development & education in Latin America.

Prerna Dokania is a PhD candidate in Economics at George Washington University and is on the 2024-25 job market. Her research interests lie at the intersection of behavioral and development economics, with a particular focus on gender and human capital development. For her job market paper, she conducted a lab-in-the-field experiment to explore whether providing information about job-related knowledge gaps nudges early childhood care providers to invest in their professional development. In another chapter of her dissertation, she collaborates with a co-author to analyze secondary data from India, examining the impact of parental seasonal migration on the educational outcomes of children left behind. Prerna previously completed a pre-doctoral fellowship at the Indian School of Business and holds a master’s degree in economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Outside of academia, she volunteers with nonprofits in the education sector and enjoys baking in her free time.

Manisha Jain is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interest is applied microeconomics, particularly public & development economics.

Jheelum Sarkar is a PhD student in Economics at American University. She is currently working at the intersection of environmental economics, gender economics & development economics. Her research centers around the topics of climate change, gender inequality, migration & labor. Her recent work examines the effect of climate shocks on intrahousehold allocation of paid & unpaid labor. She has recently received the 4th Barbara Bergmann Graduate Fellowship for Gender Research. Previously, she completed her MPhil & MA at Centre for International Trade & Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India. Her M.Phil. dissertation examines the causal impact of extreme climate events on household welfare in mountain & coastal hotspots of India. She also holds a B.Sc. in Economics from Lady Brabourne College, University of Calcutta.

I am a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Studies & Policy at the Institute for Social & Economic Change in Bangalore. I am currently engaged in my doctoral research titled "Asymmetric Information & the Choice of Doctoral Degree Seats: A Study of Screening, Signaling, & Matching Processes." My academic interests lie at the intersection of Microeconomic Theory & Behavioral Economics. Through my work, I analyze the doctoral admission process from the perspective of information asymmetry, focusing on how screening, signaling, & matching mechanisms impact the allocation of doctoral seats. For more: https://sites.google.com/view/kaibalyapati-mishra/

Dr. Shreya Nupur is an accomplished economist with a Ph.D. in Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology Patna. Specializing in development economics, labour migration, informal labour, entrepreneurship, gender & public health, her research has significantly contributed to understanding the economic well-being of rural Indian households & the impacts of migration & remittances. She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals such as Economic Papers & Economic & Political Weekly & has been actively involved in academia as a Teaching Assistant at IIT Patna. Dr. Nupur has presented her work at numerous prestigious conferences, served on organizing committees, & reviewed for reputed journals. She holds Senior & Junior Research Fellowships from IIT Patna & has passed the National Eligibility Test (NET) by the University Grant Commission. Proficient in STATA, Advanced Excel, LaTeX, SPSS, & QGIS, Dr. Nupur aims to continue her impactful research, focusing on policy-relevant issues to benefit marginalized communities.

I am currently pursuing my fourth year of Ph.D. in Economics from University of Texas, Dallas. My research interests are in applied macroeconomics, labor economics & it’s implication towards monetary policy. My Ph.D. research is on understanding the current state of US labor market from a macroeconomic perspective. This involves computing the trade-off between vacancies & unemployment for the US labor market under time variation & analyzing the state of the labor market in terms of efficiency & inefficiencies through the unemployment gap.

Prior to joining Ph.D. Economics, I did my M.Phil for Centre for Economic Studies & Planning from Jawaharlal Nehru University & my Bachelors from University of Delhi, India. I also had research experience with the Centre of WTO Studies & UNDP in India.

I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of Agricultural, Environment, & Development Economics at the Ohio State University. As an applied microeconomist, my research focuses on topics of public safety, nutrition & health, & gender equality. My work on policing & public safety in the United States investigates disparities in police response using machine learning & econometric analysis of police administrative data. My job market paper investigates racial bias in 911 dispatch decisions & its implications for the quality of police response received. I am also evaluating the effectiveness of alternative police response, such as mental health training & police co-response with social workers, in improving call outcomes for behavioral health crises. Another strand of my research in the field of development centers on women’s welfare outcomes & has involved assessing the impact of a food targeting reform, self-help-group participation, & behavior change communication interventions on women’s nutrition & empowerment outcomes in India.

Ruslan Galyamov is a doctoral candidate in the Andrew Young School of Public Policy at Georgia State University. His research focuses on individual behaviors, such as gambling or smoking, responsible for economic losses to society. Ruslan employs theories of choice under risk & experimental methods to investigate the drivers of welfare-destroying behaviors & assess readily available tools to identify or cope with them. His main goal is to inform public policy through research in the economics lab, benefiting from maximum experiment control. Ruslan comes from Kazakhstan, Central Asia, & speaks Kazakh, Russian, Turkish, Dutch, & English.

Vinay is a 5th-year PhD candidate in Economics at IIM Ahmedabad, bringing a wealth of experience from his ten-year tenure in public, private, & non-governmental organizations. His diverse background enriches his academic pursuits, particularly in the field of mechanism design. Vinay's research focuses on matching markets, specifically on allocating cadres to government bureaucrats & seats to candidates in government jobs or school admissions, all while adhering to affirmative action constraints. Additionally, he is passionate about evaluating & designing evidence-based policies to tackle pressing issues such as low learning outcomes & persistent poverty. Vinay enjoys engaging in discussions on these & related topics. He can be reached at phd20vinayj@iima.ac.in.