Nur Banu Kartal is a final-year PhD candidate in Economics at Yıldız Technical University and a research assistant at the Turkish-German University. Her research lies at the intersection of behavioural economics and applied microeconometrics, with a particular focus on cognitive and non-cognitive skills, relative concerns, and time preferences. She works extensively with large-scale panel datasets and experimental data.

Divyanshu is a PhD candidate in Economics at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India. His research is related to labor economics, organizational economics, and applied microeconomics. His dissertation focuses on the economics of monitoring and evaluation. He explores how improvements in monitoring technology influence outcomes in competitive settings using data from professional sports. His latest work investigates the role of math-intensive evaluation in driving science gender gaps. Prior to joining PhD, Divyanshu worked for 1.5 years in the investment banking division of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). He holds an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and a Bachelor’s degree in commerce from University of Delhi, India.

Saleem Shah is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Clark University. His research explores the persistent role of institutions, culture, and traditional practices in shaping health and development outcomes, as well as the impact of public policies on healthcare access and health outcomes. He holds MS and BS degrees in Economics from the Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, Pakistan, both earned with distinction. Before joining Clark, he worked as a lecturer and research fellow in Pakistan.

Shaurya Saxena is a doctoral student in Economics at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. She is currently in her fifth year. Her thesis focuses on the economic aspects of various facets of women's lives including the home, education, and employment. She aims to contribute towards ensuring gender equality in India through empirically driven policy-based work. Apart from economics, Shaurya is passionate about reading fiction and watercolor painting.

I am Anushka Mullick, currently a 5th-year PhD student at the Department of Economics, Binghamton University. My research interest broadly focuses on Development and Labor Economics, specifically topics related to Education, Labor, Cognition, Child development, and Mental health. My secondary research interest lies in the field of Environment, Crime, and Political Economy. I will be on the 2025-2026 job market.

Anushree Khatri is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, India.
Her research interests lie in applied microeconomics, particularly at the intersection of gender,
development, and public policy.

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Georgia State University, specializing in health economics, public economics, and development economics. My academic journey includes an M.A. in Economics from Georgia State University and a B.Sc. in Economics with first-class honors from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. I have previously worked as a Research Assistant at the Centre for Econometric and Allied Research at the University of Ibadan. My research area focuses on healthcare access and economic mobility, mainly investigating how geographic barriers to essential services affect vulnerable populations.

Ling Yao is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. Ling’s research lies at the intersection of agricultural and development economics, testing classic economic theories with cutting-edge empirical methods and data from unconventional sources, with the goal of informing policies related to food, agriculture, and the environment. Her job market paper uses web-scraped big data to investigate the relationship between agricultural mechanization and the structural transformation of employment, revealing gender-specific effects. She is also driven to improve quantitative tools used by agricultural economists through applied econometrics research.

Ling has worked as a teaching assistant for various undergraduate and graduate quantitative method courses. She was an adjunct instructor at St. Olaf College in Spring 2024.

Hoa Vo is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the American University in Washington, D.C.. Hoa holds a master's degree in economics from Georgia State University.  Her research lies at the intersection of labor and development economics, focusing on women’s labor issues and the influence of social norms, institutions, and policies on economic outcomes. Hoa’s current work examines the role of decision-making and household structures in relation to women’s economic opportunities.

I am a final year Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of Southern California, specializing in development and health economics. My research investigates how to improve human capital among disadvantaged populations and how governments in developing countries can improve outcomes for the poor through public programs, with a particular focus on early-childhood nutrition and health.

In my job market paper, I show that parents systematically overestimate their children’s nutritional status—particularly when they have high exposure to other malnourished children within their communities—and underestimate the long-term consequences of early-life malnutrition. Correcting these beliefs through an information treatment improves both child feeding and anthropometric outcomes. Another chapter of my dissertation examines misreporting in government administrative child growth monitoring data.

I previously worked with NEERMAN, a research organization in India, where I managed large-scale policy-focused research studies in the areas of adolescent empowerment and education, child marriage, maternal and child health, and water-sanitation-hygiene. I hold a master’s degree in economics from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, and an undergraduate degree from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University.