Hyuk “Harry” Son is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies. His research fields are Development Economics, Labor Economics, and Education Economics, with a particular focus on human capital accumulation and risk management in low-income settings. Using field experiments and large-scale survey data, his work examines how households respond to economic and environmental shocks and how these responses shape children’s education and labor outcomes—bridging human capital and risk management to inform more effective and equitable development policies.

Professor of Economics, Penn State

Qinyou Hu is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her research fields are Development Economics and Applied Microeconomics, with a particular focus on family, education, and health. Her work draws on multidisciplinary insights from economics, psychology, and sociology, often employing field experiments and both observational and experimental data. Qinyou’s broader research agenda emphasizes how social networks and non-cognitive skill development can shape outcomes in developing economies and inform effective policy interventions.

I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. I completed my Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (May 2024). I am an applied microeconomist with research interests in public economics and labor economics. My research focuses on understanding the impact of programs that support low-income families and improve economic opportunities for underprivileged individuals.

I am currently an Associate Professor of Economics at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), where I am also an affiliated faculty of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI). I earned my Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2016 and then became a visiting assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, before joining MTSU in 2017. I regularly join Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research and Chulalongkorn University as visiting fellow.

My research interests include international trade, optimal tariffs/taxation, the WTO, trade agreements, behavioral agents, Asian economies, Thailand's military coups, and search models.

Shrijata Chattopadhyay is an Assistant Professor (Finance) in the School of Management at Binghamton University, SUNY. She holds a Ph.D. in Finance from Purdue University in 2023. Shrijata’s research focuses on Corporate Finance with particular interest in Private Equity, Venture Capital, Entrepreneurial Finance, and Corporate political activism. Her work aims to study the role that private markets play in allocation of capital. Shrijata is passionate about mentoring students, especially in economics and finance with quantitative skills. She has mentored undergraduate and master’s students at Binghamton University. She believes that access to guidance from a diverse network of mentors is essential to academic success.

Dixit Poudel is a Postdoctoral Scientist in International Economics at the University of Georgia (starting August) and an Economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). His research focuses on international trade, development, and applied econometrics, using quasi-experimental, experimental, and causal inference methods to examine trade and development issues in the U.S. and Asia. At FAO, he contributes to research and policy work on agriculture, climate, and food-nutrition systems across multiple UN member countries, and co-organizes the Junior Economist Research Club.

He has received several prestigious fellowships, including the Pacific Trade and Development Fellowship, IMF Youth Fellowship, Adam Smith Fellowship at George Mason University, and recognition from the Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development (AIARD). His work has been presented at leading forums, including the annual meetings of the American Economic Association (AEA), the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA), and seminars at FAO. He holds both an M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Economics from the University of Georgia in the United States.

Sophie Mitra is professor of economics at Fordham University in New York City and founder of the Disability Data Initiative. Her research agenda has documented economic insecurity and evaluated policies that try to reduce it, in particular in relation to disability and aging. She received her doctorate in economics from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and is a fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association, an IZA fellow and an elected member of the National Academic of Social Insurance.

I am an environmental economist working on the design and evaluation of economic policies that address market failures in the provision of environmental services, with particular emphasis on payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs, nature-based climate solutions, and environmental credit markets. My recent research examined: (i) the cost-effectiveness of payment for ecosystem services programs in mitigating flood damage, (ii) the optimal structure of payments and penalties to enhance the performance of environmental services programs, and (iii) the interaction between land conservation subsidies and environmental credit markets.

Frank Adusah-Poku is an applied micro economist whose research focuses on energy and environmental economics issues such as energy poverty, energy access, energy efficiency, climate change impacts on micro and macroeconomic outcomes, environmental pollution and evaluation of energy policy instruments. He is currently a Lecturer at the Department of Economics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi-Ghana. He is a Research Fellow at the ENRRI-EfD Ghana. He is also Fellow of the 2022-2023 EfD Early Career Fellowship Program and a STAAARS+ Cohort 4 Fellow. He is also an Editor at the Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (Springer). He teaches Economics courses both at the graduate and undergraduate levels. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) degree in Economics from Kobe University, Japan. He also hold a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) degree in Economics and Bachelor of Arts (B.A) degree in Economics with Statistics, both from the University of Ghana.