Mikey speaks to Manaswini Rao, an assistant professor of economics at the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics at the University of Delaware. Manaswini discusses the challenges faced by the judicial system in India, the promise of mediation address some of those challanges, and her new working paper that measures whether mediation lives up to that promise.

Read the working paper here!

Santiago speaks with Claudio Ferraz about the research behind "When Democracy Refuses to Die: Evaluating a Training Program for New Politicians", a paper on RenovaBR, one of the world’s largest training programs for aspiring politicians in Brazil. They discuss how to build a partnership with a large NGO while keeping the collaboration aligned with the incentives, standards, and timelines of academic research. Claudio also reflects on a question many researchers face: how to know when a paper is done, when an extension truly adds value, and when an idea belongs in a separate project instead. They close by discussing how to choose co-authors and why long-term collaborations can make research better and more sustainable.

The paper is co-authored with Ernesto Dal Bó, Frederico Finan, and Pedro Pessoa and is available at https://www.nber.org/papers/w33251.

In this episode, Precious interviews Andre Gray (UC San Diego) about his job-market paper, "Density and Diversity in African Cities." Andre discusses how migration size and migrant composition shape productivity, conflict, and structural transformation in rapidly urbanizing African cities. He also shares what drew him to urban and development economics and reflects on building a research agenda spanning African and U.S. settings.

Check out Andre's JMP here!

Riccardo talks to Fulvia Budillon, a PhD candidate in Economics at UC San Diego currently on the job market. Fulvia discusses the backstory of her job market paper, “Beyond Access: Facility Birth, Healthcare Use and Early-Life Mortality in Malawi.”
The conversation begins in the field, where Fulvia—through qualitative work, conversations, and failed attempts—arrives at her current research question and identification strategy. It then moves to the “middle stage” of the process: dataset construction, cleaning, and working with large administrative data. Finally, it circles back to the field, which is part of the reason Fulvia is drawn to development and health topics: behind the data she studies are real people whose health is shaped in meaningful ways by the circumstances they live in.
You can find the link to Fulvia’s paper here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yCLMf3jxV-1gEMX5C_4h2TUeKSNVw9G-/view
To learn more about our wonderful candidate, you can visit her website: https://www.fulviabudillon.com/home-page

Riccardo speaks with Ariel Zucker, Assistant Professor of Economics at UC Santa Cruz, about her paper “Price Incentives for Conservation: Experimental Evidence from Groundwater Irrigation.”
The conversation explores the logistical challenges of running a large-scale field intervention, the lessons learned from multiple pilot attempts, and the trade-offs graduate students often face when conducting fieldwork on a tight budget. It concludes with a broader reflection on what draws Ariel to her field of research and to academia more generally.
You can find the working paper (coauthored with Nick Hagerty) here: https://www.arielzucker.net/_files/ugd/2eee53_ed03d0df4bfb4e5694b95deb022c6768.pdf

Mikey speaks with Lauren Falcao Bergquist, an assistant professor of economics and global affairs at Yale. Lauren talks about how and why she studies agriculture in developing countries, the challenges that entails, and how she and her co-authors overcome those challenges in her new paper on Ugandan coffee farmers and their supply chains.

Precious speaks with Paul Christian, an Economist in the Development Impact (DIME) Department at the World Bank, whose research explores how agricultural and food security programs can better target and manage irrigation and subsidy projects across the Global South.

Paul shares the story behind his paper “Shaping Productive and Progressive Agricultural Subsidies in Mozambique,” which examines how the design of subsidy price schedules can influence both productivity and equity. He reflects on what first drew him to agricultural economics, how to design field experiments that balance rigor with real-world relevance, and why open-mindedness and opportunism matter in development research.

Santiago speaks with Dean Spears, a Professor at University of Texas at Austin. Dean shares the backstory of his new book with Michael Geruso. He tells us how he bridges working across economics, demography and ethics and why he thinks we should all engage in the topic of depopulation.

His new book is available here: https://deanspears.net/books/after-the-spike-population-progress-and-the-case-for-people/

Join Maddison as she speaks with Madeline McKelway, an Assistant Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. Maddie shares the backstory behind her paper with Namrata Kala, "The Power of Persuasion: Causal Effects of Household Communication on Women's Employment." She also shares her experience navigating field work and getting started with RCTs.

The working paper can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LgQtwvTMExxf49YvnkgWugxhffJ2rqlF/view

In this episode, Maddison interviews Yasir Khan, an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh, about the backstory behind his paper coauthored with S.K. Ritadhi, “Economic and Political Consequences of Credit Policy for Minorities: Evidence from India.” Yasir also shares his experience and his advice about starting and navigating collaborations in grad school.

The working paper can be found here: https://y-khan.github.io/yasirkhan.org/khan_ritadhi_minority.pdf