Backstory: How Research Papers in Economics Get Made Riccardo Di Cato, Aakash Bhalothia, and Santiago Cantillo

In this episode of backstory, host Aakash Bhalothia interviews development economists Edward Miguel and Paul Niehaus about their Frisch award-winning paper, "General Equilibrium Effects of Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence from Kenya." They discuss the paper's groundbreaking findings on the macroeconomic impacts of cash transfers in rural Kenya. The conversation delves into how the authors started working together, designing long-term experiments, and the broader motivations behind Ted and Paul's research. The paper is co-authored with Dennis Egger, Johannes Haushofer, and Michael Walker. Here is the link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.3982/ECTA17945

In this episode, Salma Mousa, Assistant Professor of Political Science at UCLA, discusses her paper "Players, Performance, and Prejudice: Are Minorities Punished More Harshly for Having a Bad Day?" with Riccardo. Tune in for insights into the development of this paper and Salma's broader research agenda, including her perspective on the research process as a political scientist. The paper is coauthored with Ala Alrababah, William Marble, and Alexandra Siegel. You can find an abstract on Salma's website: https://www.salmamousa.com/working-papers.

In this episode, Duncan Thomas shared insights from his paper on the aftermath of large-scale disasters. Duncan and Aakash discussed the significance of collecting high-quality data, highlighting the importance of teamwork and collaboration. The paper is titled: " Longer-term impacts of exposure to a large-scale natural disaster on health, cognition and well-being."

In this episode, Riccardo speaks with Francesco Amodio, Associate Professor of Economics at McGill University, about his paper titled "Labor Market Power, Self-employment, and Development." We explore the process of generating ideas for projects and identification strategies. Additionally, we discuss structural modeling and what initially sparked Francesco's interest in labor markets within developing countries. Here is a link to the paper, co-authored with Pamela Medina and Monica Morlacco: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c1Rv6vTKz0g6FEZ19VsK8fa_fSrF-niT/view

In this episode, Aakash talks to Girija Borker, an Economist at DIME, World Bank. They discuss her paper titled "Safety First: Perceived Risk of Street Harassment and Educational Choices of Women". Dive in to learn how Girija went about identifying important problems related to gender, and her perspectives on learning the best tools to answer questions, risk mitigation strategies, and motivation for research. 

Join Santiago as he delves into conversation with Martin Mattsson from the National University of Singapore about his working paper titled "Formalizing Dispute Resolution: Effects of Village Courts in Bangladesh". Martin tells us the backstory of a large-scale RCT covering 6 million people, the value of trust in overcoming challenges when dealing with multiple government branches, and some of the experiences that prepared him to conduct such an intervention. He also shares his perspective on how to start research projects and ensure their relevance for policy. You can find the working paper here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4740074