Our People
Get to know our faculty members and find contact information for our staff. For general inquiries about the Lab, please contact Poverty-Research@Northwestern.edu.
Leadership
Dean Karlan
Nemmers Distinguished Professor of Economics and Finance
Affiliation: Kellogg School of Management
Dean Karlan is a Buffett Institute Faculty Fellow and the Nemmers Distinguished Professor of Economics and Finance at the Kellogg School of Management. His research focuses on microeconomic issues of poverty, typically employing experimental methodologies and behavioral economics insights to examine what works, what does not and why in interventions in sustainable income generation for those in poverty, household and entrepreneurial finance, health behavior and charitable giving.
Chris Udry
Robert E. and Emily King Professor
Affiliation: Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences
Chris Udry is a Buffett Institute Faculty Fellow and the King Professor of Economics. He is a development economist whose research focuses on rural economic activity in Sub-Saharan Africa. His current research examines technological change, risk and financial markets, gender and households, property rights, psychological well-being and economic decision-making and a variety of other aspects of rural economic organization.
Affiliates
Lori Beaman
Associate Professor of Economics
Affiliation: Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences
Lori Beaman is an associate professor of economics. A development economist working on microeconomic issues, Lori’s research interests are centered on social networks, agriculture, labor markets and gender. She holds a PhD in economics from Yale University.
Erika Deserranno
Assistant Professor of Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences
Affiliation: Kellogg School of Management
Erika Deserranno is an assistant professor of managerial economics & decision sciences. Her research interests lie at the intersection between development and personnel economics. She is working on issues related to the selection, recruitment and motivation of workers both in private and public organizations. She received her PhD in economics from the London School of Economics.
Andrew Dillon
Clinical Associate Professor
Affiliation: Kellogg School of Management
Andrew Dillon is a development economist whose research focuses on how improving productivity increases welfare in developing countries and the methods and measures that applied development economists use in estimating causal relationships. His current research focuses on productivity-enhancing investments that agricultural households may make in health and nutrition, new agricultural technologies and education. His ongoing projects are currently being implemented with government, private sector firms and NGOs in Burkina Faso, Mali and Nigeria. Much of his research program is supported by collecting new multi-topic household survey data, of which he has contributed to the design and supervision of over 30 new surveys during the past 8 years.
Matthias Doepke
Professor of Economics
Affiliation: Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences
Matthias Doepke is a professor of economics. His research deals with topics in economic growth and development, political economy and monetary economics. Recently, he has worked on theories of demographic change, family economics, the role of political and cultural change in economic development, and redistributional effects of inflation. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, editor of the Review of Economic Dynamics and an associate editor of the American Economic Review.
Leander Heldring
Assistant Professor of Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences
Affiliation: Kellogg School of Management
Leander Heldring joined Kellogg in 2020 after receiving his PhD in economics from the University of Oxford. His research interests are in economic development, political economy and economic history, with a particular focus on the role of government in facilitating or stifling innovation, entrepreneurship and growth.
Sara Hernández-Saborit
Assistant Professor of Instruction
Affiliation: Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences
Sara Hernández-Saborit is an assistant professor of instruction in economics. Her research lies at the intersection of development and labor economics, with a marked gender component. She is particularly interested in understanding the mechanisms that propel females into the labor force and what the consequences are of doing so for individuals, households and, by extension, their communities. Her work has focused on the interaction between international trade and living standards, including violence, education and fertility. She holds a PhD in economics from MIT.
Sean Higgins
Assistant Professor of Finance
Affiliation: Kellogg School of Management
Sean Higgins is an assistant professor of finance. He is an applied microeconomist with interests in household finance, corporate finance, and development economics. His research studies how technology reduces frictions in financial markets, and the effect of reducing these frictions on households and small businesses. He received a BS and PhD in Economics from Tulane University. Prior to joining Kellogg, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
Ofer Malamud
Associate Professor of Human Development and Social Policy
Affiliation: School of Education and Social Policy
Ofer Malamud is an economist focused on education policy from an international perspective. His research is concentrated in three substantive areas: educational investments over the life course, the role of technology in the formation of human capital and the effect of general and specific education on labor market outcomes. He has studied these topics in a wide range of institutional settings across countries such as Chile, England, Israel, Mexico, Peru, Romania, Scotland and the United States.
Kiminori Matsuyama
Professor of Economics
Affiliation: Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Kiminori Matsuyama is a professor of economics. His research interests concern international trade and economic growth and development. He is particularly interested in understanding the mechanisms behind macroeconomic instability, structural transformation as well as inequality across countries, regions and households. He is a fellow of Econometric Society. He was the 1996 winner of the Nakahara Prize awarded to the best young economist by the Japanese Economic Association. He currently serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Economic Theory and the Journal of the Japanese and International Economies.
Joel Mokyr
Robert H. Strotz Professor of Economics
Affiliation: Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Joel Mokyr, Strotz Professor of Economics, conducts research on the economic history of Europe, and specializes in the period 1750-1914. His current research is concerned with the understanding of the economic and intellectual roots of technological progress and the growth of useful knowledge in European societies as well as the impact that industrialization and economic progress have had on economic welfare. He was the 2006 winner of the biennial Heineken Award for History offered by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and the winner of the 2015 Balzan International Prize for economic history.
Ameet Morjaria
Assistant Professor of Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences
Affiliation: Kellogg School of Management
Ameet Morjaria is an assistant professor of managerial economics & decision sciences. His research interests are in development economics, organizations and political economy across several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. His current research focuses on understanding the impact of competition on productivity and relational contracts, industrial policy in emerging markets, the impact of electoral conflict on firm operations and the political economy of resource management in weak institutionalized economies. He completed his PhD in economics from the London School of Economics.
Jacopo Ponticelli
Associate Professor of Finance
Affiliation: Kellogg School of Management
Jacopo Ponticelli is an associate professor of finance. He is an applied economist that primarily studies corporate finance and development economics. His research interests include law and finance, financial development and economic growth. Before joining Kellogg School of Management, he served as an assistant professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He holds a PhD in economics from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain).
Nancy Qian
James J. O'Connor Professor of Managerial Economics & Decision
Affiliation: Kellogg School of Management
Nancy Qian is a professor of managerial economics & decision sciences. Her research provides empirical evidence for a set of core questions in development economics that broadly fall into three sub-categories: demography and development, geography and development, and institutions and development. She holds a PhD in economics from MIT.
Edoardo Teso
Assistant Professor of Managerial Economics & Decision Science
Affiliation: Kellogg School of Management
Edoardo Teso is an assistant professor of managerial economics & decision sciences. His research interests include political economy, development economics and applied microeconomics. He works on issues related to the personnel economics of the state, the process of formation of individual personal preferences and campaign finance. He received his PhD in political economy and government from the Department of Economics at Harvard University.
Vikrant Vig
Henry D. Bullock Chaired Professor of Finance
Affiliation: Kellogg School of Management
Vikrant Vig is the Henry D. Bullock Chaired Professor of Finance at the Kellogg School of Management. Prior to this, he was a Term Chair Professor of Finance at the London Business School. His research interest lies at the intersection of Law, Politics, and Organizations. He received his PhD from Columbia University; Master of Finance, MBA, and Master of Science in Engineering from the University of Illinois; and bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Delhi.
Samuel Ampaw
Postdoctoral Scholar
samuel.ampaw@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Svankita Arora
Research Analyst
svankita.arora@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Lasse Brune
Postdoctoral Fellow
lasse.brune@kellogg.northwestern.edu
View Bio
Tommaso Crosta
Research Analyst
tommaso.crosta@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Navishti Das
Senior Research Project Coordinator
navishti.das@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Isabel Oñate Falomir
Research Manager
isabel.onate@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Mike Feng
Research Analyst
mike.feng@kellogg.northwestern.eduLiam Frolund
Research Analyst
liam.frolund@kellogg.northwestern.eduSrishti Gupta
Research Analyst
srishti.gupta@kellogg.northwestern.eduMika Inoue
Research Analyst
mika.inoue@kellogg.northwestern.eduLeah Kim
Research Analyst
ejin.kim@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Hart Lang
Administrative Assistant for Dean Karlan
annabel.lang@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Javier Madrazo
Research Project Coordinator
javier.madrazo@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Elise Mitchell
Project Coordinator
elise.mitchell@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Andre Nickow
Research Manager
Phone number: 847-491-5480
a-nickow@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Erin Ntalo
Senior Research Project Coordinator
erin.ntalo@kellogg.northwestern.eduFinley Ong
Research Analyst
finley.ong@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Amol Raswan
Research Analyst
amol.raswan@kellogg.northwestern.eduSean Rhee
Research Analyst
hojune.rhee@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Lauriane Yehouenou
Research Manager
lauriane.yehouenou@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Ellen Bates-Jefferys
Senior Program Associate
Affiliation: Innovations for Poverty Action
ebates-jefferys@poverty-action.org
Yazen Kashlan
Research Analyst
Affiliation: Innovations for Poverty Action
ykashlan@poverty-action.org
Matthew Bird
Professor-Researcher
Affiliation: Universidad del Pacífico
matthew.bird@northwestern.edu
Prathap Kasina
Regional Director
Affiliation: Innovations for Poverty Action
bpkasina@poverty-action.org
Sneha Stephen
Research Manager
Affiliation: Innovations for Poverty Action
sstephen@poverty-action.org
Jonah Watt
Program Associate
Affiliation: Innovations for Poverty Action
jwatt@poverty-action.org
Job Openings
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Please apply by March 15th
The Evidence to Policy Research Initiative is a new initiative being set up by the Global Poverty Research Lab (GPRL). Numerous research studies have evaluated social programs and policies and generated rigorous evidence on their effectiveness. However, little, if any, of this evidence informs policymaking. The Evidence to Policy Research Initiative (EPRI) aims to understand this low take-up of existing evidence by rigorously studying the evidence-to-policy nexus. As a part of the initiative set-up, EPRI aims to publish a white paper that summarizes the academic work done to date, discusses its limitations, and maps out avenues for future engagement with the topic. EPRI is looking for a part-time undergraduate to assist with the literature review necessary for the white paper. You will work closely with post-doctoral candidate Julius Ruschenpohler who is working with Prof. Dean Karlan on this initiative. Ideal candidates would have some experience conducting literature reviews in some form either for personal research papers, class work, research projects, etc.
Interested candidates may submit their CVs to Prathap Kasina at bhavani.kasina@kellogg.northwestern.edu.