EconLab RA Openings
RA Opportunities in Economics for 2023-2024
Title: Research Assistant with the Global Poverty Research Lab Openings: Multiple Project description: An economics PhD student working with the Global Poverty Research Lab is recruiting RA(s) with extensive knowledge of Indian surnames for a project relating to elections in India. In particular, they should be able to match surnames of different spellings and identify potential associations with jatis and/or other social groups. Position description: In this research project, I try to understand how economic shocks would affect the political representation and electoral success of different caste groups. We thus match the surnames of state-level political candidates and board members of publicly listed firms with jatis through fuzzy name-matching algorithms. Overall, I have 158,793 state-surname pairs and matched 87,014 pairs with jatis available in the People of India (POI) Anthropological survey by fuzzy name-matching algorithms. Out of 87,014 matches, 17,006 are matched perfectly with either surnames or group names recorded in the POI data, meaning that the remaining 70,008 observations are matched through a fuzzy name-matching algorithm. Moreover, we drop thousands of observations when cleaning the fuzzy name-matching algorithm outputs, but some dropped observations may include true matches. I would like RA(s) to (i) double-check the validity of 70,008 fuzzy name-matching results and (ii) inspect 375,110 state-surname pairs that are dropped in the process of cleaning the fuzzy name-matching algorithm outputs. The necessary qualification is the familiarity with Indian surnames. Eligibility:
If you would like to apply, please contact Ryu Matsuura at ryumatsuura@u.northwestern.edu. The hope is to start the project as soon as possible. |
Title: Research and Evaluation Officer, Forward Society Lab - University of Toronto Location: Puerto Rico Openings: 1 Project description: A research practice partnership seeks to hire a Research and Evaluation Officer to serve as liaison between a team of researchers at the University of Toronto Forward Society Lab and the Puerto Rico Department of Education (PRDE). The Research and Evaluation Officer will assist in the development and implementation of several ongoing research and evaluation initiatives, while receiving mentorship, training and support from the Research Team. The Research and Evaluation Officer will be a full-time position. Position description: Working closely with researchers and policymakers, the Research and Evaluation Officer will be responsible for coordinating and facilitating data sharing and collection, monitoring research project execution, managing relationships across project partners, and supporting research implementation efforts. As the research team is mostly remote, the Research and Evaluation Officer will be the on-the-ground staff ensuring that the research projects are successfully launched and implemented. The Officer will be the primary liaison between the research team and the data collection and program implementation activities. The Officer will be based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It is expected that the position will spend a considerable amount of time at the PRDE, which will designate office space for this position. The individual will have an opportunity to work with Gustavo J. Bobonis, Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto, public servants in Puerto Rico, and the evaluation staff at J-PAL North America based at MIT. Eligibility:
This role will start in the Summer 2024. Interested candidates should send their documents as an attached PDF to dmgomez@povertyactionlab.org and lruiz@povertyactionlab.org. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled. |