I am a applied microeconomist working on Labor, Education and Development Economics. My research focuses on the effects of (better) transportation on college access and choice and how college reputation affects labor market outcomes. In other work, I study the spillover effects of large policies in education markets and health outcomes. I currently have ongoing projects in Peru and the Dominican Republic.

I am an environmental economist with research themes spanning development, agriculture, and political economy. My work studies how economic activity and institutions shape the environment, including biodiversity, land use, and air quality. I completed a PhD and MA from the University of British Columbia, and a BA from McGill University. I was also previously an EPoD fellow at Harvard and a Research Associate at J-PAL South Asia.

Mahesh Karra is an Associate Professor of Global Development Policy at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, the Associate Director of the Human Capital Initiative, and the Director of the Program on Women's Empowerment Research at the BU Global Development Policy Center. His academic and research interests are broadly in development economics, health economics, quantitative methods, and applied demography. His research utilizes experimental and non-experimental methods to investigate the relationships between population, health, and economic development in low- and middle-income countries. He has conducted field work in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, and his current research uses randomized controlled trials to evaluate the health and economic effects of improving access to family planning and maternal and child health services in Malawi, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Tanzania. He has also worked for the Population Reference Bureau and the Futures Group International and served as a consultant to the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the Population Council. He is also a Co-Editor of Studies in Family Planning, a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes articles on public health, social science, and biomedical research on sexual and reproductive health, fertility, and family planning. He holds a B.A. in Economics and Hispanic Studies (Joint Honours) from McGill University, an M.Sc. in Economics from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, and an Sc.D. in Global Health Economics from Harvard University.

Dick Startz is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and professor emeritus at the University of Washington (where he served as department chair and as a divisional dean). Professor Startz has published empirical work on a wide range of topics as well as making a number of contributions to econometric methodology. His work in education has seen two main outlets. The first is his book, Profit of Education (Praeger 2010), which builds the economic case for higher teacher salaries. The second main outlet blogging about education at the Brookings Institution Brown Center Chalkboard and his blog www.ProfitOfEducation.org, which has been described as “Freakonomics for the economics of schooling.” The roughly 500 posts are split between original, short data-driven analyses of topics in the economics of education and reviews of research findings from the academic literature. In addition to his work on the economics of education, Professor Startz is the coauthor of a macroeconomics text which has been translated into 8 languages, several books on personal computing, and many academic journal articles. More information can be found at http://startz.weebly.com/.

I am an industrial organization economist who studies interactions among firms, consumers, and the government to understand and improve others’ lived experiences. My research has three broad themes. First, I focus on high-profile social, political, and economic questions. Second, I develop and apply innovative new methods to overcome challenges in answering these questions. Third, I take my work out of the academy to help policymakers understand the impacts of their decisions.

I am an Economist at the Federal Reserve Board, with my research specialty being Public Economics and Development economics.

Ergin Bayrak, Ph.D., is an associate professor (teaching) of Economics with the University of Southern California Department of Economics, which he joined in 2011.

Prior to his appointment with USC Economics, Bayrak was a lecturer and Scholar in Residence with the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a Research Associate with the USC Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE).

In 2009 he was a Google Policy Fellow with the New America Foundation in Washington, DC.

Bayrak teaches courses in microeconomic principles, theory, analysis and policy and applications in the telecommunication industries and innovation.

Selected Publications
• "Valuing Time Intensive Goods: An Application to Wireless and Wired Internet." Internet Econometrics. Serge Allegrezza and Anne Dubrocard, Eds. AEA Series, Palgrave Macmillan (2012).
• "Assessment of the Regional Economic Impacts of Catastrophic Events: CGE analysis of resource loss and behavioral effects of a RDD attack scenario." Risk Analysis 2012 Apr; 32(4):583-600 (with J. Giesecke, W. Burns, A. Barrett, A. Rose, and M. Suher)(2012).
• "The Economics of Cloud Computing." Korean Economic Review Volume 27, Number 2, Winter 2011, 203-230 (with John Conley and Simon Wilkie)(2011) .
• "Welfare Effects of Spectrum Management Regimes." New Frontiers in Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks 3rd IEEE Symposium, 1-11. (2008).
• "Liberalization, TFP and Growth: Argentina and Turkey since the 1970s." Empirical Models in Social Sciences Proceedings of IEU ISC, 31-47 (2008).

Laura Zimmermann holds a joint position as an associate professor in the Department of Economics and the Department of International Affairs (Political Science) at the University of Georgia. Her work focuses on two areas: Studying the economic and political impacts of large government policies in developing countries to generate a holistic picture of how anti-poverty efforts can be made more effective; and understanding how households deal with economic shocks, particularly with respect to job opportunities as well as the allocation of resources to women and girls.

Born and raised in Germany, Laura received her BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from the University of Oxford (2008), and her MA (2010) and Ph.D. (2014) in Economics from the University of Michigan.

Dr Rashmi Barua teaches at the Centre for International Trade and Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi). Prior to that she has worked at the School of Economics, Singapore Management University and the Economics and Planning Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi. Her research spans across the economics of education and labor markets with specific interest in early childhood human capital investments (health and education), female labor supply and economics of crime. More recently she has worked on financial education among international migrants. Most of her research has been a mix of methodological contributions, including randomized evaluations, and empirical applications that are guided by sound economic theory. A native of India, she received a Ph.D. in economics from Boston University in 2008

Mevlude Akbulut-Yuksel is a Professor of Economics at Dalhousie University, Canada. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Houston in 2009. She earned a B.S. Degree in Economics from METU, Turkey in 2004. Her research focuses on topics intertwining Labor Economics, Development Economics, and Health Economics. She has been especially interested in the long-term effects of childhood environment, educational and health policies on individuals’ long-term labor market, education, and health outcomes.