Megha Patnaik is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics & Finance at LUISS Guido Carli University and a Research Affiliate at the Centre for Economic Policy Research and CESifo Institute. Her research interests include management, innovation, and firm productivity.

She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University, an M.Sc. in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics, and a B.Sc. in Mathematics from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi. Her work has been published in the American Economic Review and Management Science. She is the recipient of the Kapnick Scholarship from SIEPR, the Kauffman Dissertation Award and the LUISS teaching excellence award.

She is cofounder of Leap insights where she heads the India Innovation Lab and part of the Network of Women in Data Science & Social Science. Previously, she has held positions at the Indian Statistical Institute and the Esya Centre, and worked as a consultant for Intuit, Britannia, Ambit Capital and the Esya Centre.

My research interests are in Behavioral Economics applied to various topics in the domain of Labor and Development Economics. For much of my work, I use a combination of lab, field, and online experiments as well as secondary data to address questions about gender, households, and workplace incentives. 

Ellen McCullough is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Georgia. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Economics and Management from Cornell University and her B.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University. Her research examines how households in low-income countries make decisions about food, agriculture, labor, and health, and how those decisions respond to changing economic conditions and public policy. Using field experiments, household surveys, and applied microeconomic methods, she studies topics including agricultural productivity, food systems transformation, nutrition, gender, and unpaid care work, with much of her research conducted in sub-Saharan Africa. Her work seeks to generate evidence that helps governments, international organizations, and development practitioners design more effective policies to improve livelihoods, food security, and well-being.

At the University of Georgia, McCullough teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in development economics, global food systems, and agricultural development. She is committed to preparing students for careers in research, policy, and international development by integrating professional development, applied research experiences, and close faculty mentorship into her courses. Through her teaching and advising, she encourages students to use economic thinking and rigorous evidence to address some of the world's most pressing challenges in agriculture, food security, and sustainable development.

Rafi is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel. His research examines how exposure to armed conflict and other shocks shapes human capital and well-being over the life course, and how policy can respond, primarily in developing and conflict-affected settings. A complementary line of work studies the non-academic effects of the four-day school week in the United States.

Danila Serra is a Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University, where she holds a joint appointment in the Economics Department and the Bush School of Government and Public Service. She is an affiliated researcher at JPAL and IZA. Danila is an applied behavioral economist, using experimental methods to address key questions in political economy, education, labor and gender economics. Her recent work focuses on role models and education, barriers to women’s leadership and career progression, gender-based violence, and the impact of ethics training on police officers.

In 2017, she was chosen as the inaugural recipient of the Vernon Smith Ascending Scholar Prize, given by the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics to an exceptional scholar using experiments in economics research. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Oxford.

Dick Startz is Distinguished Professor Emeritus 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/.

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.