DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Title: Escaping Poverty project 

Professor: Global Poverty Research Lab, Prof. Chris Udry, Prof. Dean Karlan, Mika Inoue (Research Analyst)

Hours: Flexible, part-time

Skills:

• Strong interest in public policy and economic development in low-income countries
• Familiarity with Stata would be preferred
• Excel proficiency

Course Requirements: Econometrics (ECON 281 or ECON 381-1) strongly preferred

Details: The Global Poverty Research Lab aims to use empirical evidence and interdisciplinary engagement to understand drivers, consequences and solutions to poverty issues around the world. We are currently recruiting an undergraduate research assistant to support the Escaping Poverty project. Escaping Poverty tests several variations of a comprehensive livelihood intervention that includes a group-based skills training. This main intervention is tested in combination with and separately from a group cognitive-behavioral therapy program aimed at improving mental health. The RA will help organize folders related to the project, including identifying the purpose of each file and determining duplicate or extraneous files. The RA would need to create a data map and use this map to potentially restructure the folders. We anticipate this being a short-term project over the summer. If initial tasks go well, there may be an option to extend the assistantship for additional tasks that would include more direct data analysis work using Stata. 

Application: Please send a CV/resume, unofficial transcript, and a few sentences regarding your interest in development studies to Andre Nickow at a-nickow@kellogg.northwestern.edu.

"Accepting applications until March 15th"

Title: The Evidence to Policy Research Initiative 

Professor: Dean Karlan 

Hours: Flexible, part-time

Skills: Experience conducting literature reviews (preferred)

Details: 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. 

Submit CV to Prathap Kasina

"Accepting applications for the 2021-22 academic year."

Title: A Large-Scale Analysis of Merger Simulations (Multiple Positions Available)

 Professor: Vivek Bhattacharya and Gaston Illanes

 Hours: Flexible, but prefer a commitment of at least 10-15 per week

 Class Requirements: Econometrics strongly preferred

 Skills: Familiarity with Python would be preferred

 Details: This project is designed to evaluate standard tools in industrial organization to predict the price effects of mergers.  The RAs will help the professors gather and clean data from a variety of sources, including the Nielsen Retail Scanner Dataset, SEC filings, and other databases to generate information about products associated with a large set of mergers.  They will then use this data and existing Python code to (1) predict the effects of mergers that actually happened in the past and (2) compare the predictions to the observed price effects.  We anticipate this being a short-term project over the summer.

Apply Here