I received my PhD in economics from the University of California, Irvine and am currently an associate professor at the University of Connecticut, honorary senior lecturer at Makerere University in Uganda, and a research fellow at RWI in Essen, Germany. I was previously a post-doctoral fellow at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and have consulted for the World Bank, Green Climate Fund, ILO, and various government and ministry offices across Africa.
My research focuses on growth and development, food security, household bargaining, individual preferences and community action. This includes work on micro-enterprise development, cash grants, micro-finance, business skills training, agricultural supply chains and community based anti-corruption programming.
My main methodological approaches include randomized control trials and behavioral lab-in-the-field experiments. I have conducted my research in several sub-Saharan Africa and Asian countries, including Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Myanmar and India, as well as Paraguay.
My work has been published in several top academic journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Economic Journal, World Development, Economic Development and Cultural Change and others. I also published a book on impact evaluation methods with the World Bank and have published in Scientific American, a popular science magazine. My work has been mentioned in media outlets such as The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, Forbes, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Economist and many other places.
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