I write and help others write about a lot of fascinating topics: from trade and industrial policy to social sustainability, human agency, RCTs, and vaccine equity – to North Korea, South Sudan, and beyond.
Below are examples of some of my writing, interviews, editing, and other projects.
Writing
Books
The Unequal Effects of Globalization by Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg (MIT Press)
Social Sustainability in Development: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century with Patrick Barron, Louise Cord, José Cuesta, Sabina Espinoza, & Michael Woolcock (World Bank)
Academic
Market design to accelerate Covid-19 vaccine supply with Susan Athey, Rachel Glennerster, Michael Kremer, Alex Tabarrok, & others (Science)
Social sustainability and the development process with Patrick Barron, Louise Cord, José Cuesta, Sabina Espinoza, & Michael Woolcock (Oxford Development Studies)
South Sudan’s capability trap with Lant Pritchett & Peter Biar Ajak (Harvard Kennedy School)
Middle-income trap: Myth or reality? with Norman Loayza & Michael Woolcock (World Bank)
South Sudan: The road from Paris to Juba, 2005-11 (UNU World Institute for Development Economics Research)
You can find me on Google Scholar here.
Reports
Covid-19 & external debt in Africa with Raymond Gilpin (UN Development Program)
Purchasing Covid-19 vaccines at risk with AcceleratingHT (Inter-American Development Bank)
Report to Congress on evaluation at the MDBs with the Office of International Affairs (US Treasury Department)
Essays & articles
Traveling in the North Country (Lucky Peach), finalist for James Beard Journalism Award
Planting seeds for public policy (Harvard Growth Lab)
Global development in the ‘60s: Dudley Seers (Yale Economic Growth Center)
Needles in the haystack: Unlocking entrepreneurship in Africa (Harvard Kennedy School Review)
How marriage choices affect gender gaps & inequality (Yale News)
Gender inequality & economic growth (Yale EGC)
Briefs, blogs, & op-eds
Social sustainability: a critical gap in the global development agenda with co-authors (World Bank blog)
G7, the World Bank, & vaccine equity with Amanda Glassman (Center for Global Development)
Military families, infertility, & national security (American Society for Reproductive Medicine)
Why countries should purchase Covid-19 vaccines at risk with AcceleratingHT (Inter-American Development Bank)
Yale economists & India’s Covid-19 response (Yale News)
Female employment & mobile internet access (Yale EGC)
Networks effects on trade & firm growth: Yale EGC
Interviews & profiles
Economics & development
Spatial economics: Costas Arkolakis
Trade & development: Lauren Falcao Bergquist & Amit Khandelwal
Gender & development in Brazil & India: Girija Borker & Ieda Matavelli
Inequality in Latin America: José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez & Mayara Felix
Global trade at the firm level: Ana Cecília Fieler
Supply chains & trade disruptions: Ana Cecília Fieler & Guillermo Noguera
Care economy & feminist economics: Nancy Folbre
Market size, inequality, & poverty reduction: Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg
Transition economics: Beata Javorcik
Evidence, RCTs, & technology: Dean Karlan
Gender & economic growth: Rohini Pande & Penny Goldberg
Economics & machine learning: Philipp Strack
Structural transformation & agricultural productivity in Africa: Chris Udry
Economics & machine learning: Philipp Strack
Behavioral economics, psychology, & social development
Social factors in development: Eliana La Ferrara
Social psychology – “wise interventions”: Greg Walton
Experimental economics: Maria Kogelnik & Alejandro Martinez-Marquina
The marginalized mind: Anandi Mani
Learning, decision making, & bias: Mira Frick
Livelihoods, agency, & hope: Naila Kabeer
A theory of agency: Kaushik Basu
Scaling mental health care: Gary Belkin
The psychology of personal agency: Anita Shankar
Other interviews & profiles
Early childhood development: Amer Hasan & Costas Meghir
Economic history – big business, anti-trust, & capitalism: Naomi Lamoreaux
Lessons in agency: Agency-based training in South & Southeast Asia
From civil war to the ivy league: Clair Kevin Nshimirimana
Editing
Books
Edited Industrial Policy for Development by Ana Margarida Fernandes & Tristan Reed (World Bank)
Edited Mission Driven Bureaucrats by Dan Honig (Oxford University Press)
Edited Big Time Off: The Transformative Power of Sabbaticals and How to Take One by DJ DiDonna (Simon & Schuster)
Developed initial manuscript for Building State Capability by Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett, & Michael Woolcock (Oxford University Press)
Writing and editorial support for forthcoming World Bank flagships on governance & private sector development and climate change & FCV.
Reports
Edited Mainstreaming Personal Agency in Global Development (SEE Change at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health)
Edited Moving up: Promoting economic mobility through network analysis (Brookings)
Edited Public Institutions: Critical Enablers for Addressing Climate Change (World Bank)
Edited Bridging the Gap: Inequality & Jobs in Thailand (World Bank)
Edited No Data, No Story: Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines (World Bank)
Edited Commercial Development in Indigenous Peoples’ Territories (World Bank)
Edited Giant in the shadows: Subprime corporate debt (Americans for Financial Reform)
Academic
Edited The Changing Landscape of International Development: An Introduction (Handbook of Development Economics, Vol. 6)
Edited The Changing Nature of International Trade and its Implications for Development (Handbook of Development Economics, Vol. 6)
Edited Globalization in crisis: Confronting a new economic reality (WIDER Annual Lecture)
Edited Understanding Early Childhood Development & Its Importance (NBER Reporter)
Edited The global cost of gender inequality in labor market opportunities (VoxDev)
Edited Innovations in measurement & evaluation of human behavior (CEDIL)
Edited Aggregate implications of barriers to female entrepreneurship (VoxEU)
Edited Why is growth in developing countries so hard to measure? (Journal of Economic Perspectives)
Edited Market size and spatial growth: Evidence from Germany (Econometrica)
Edited Economics & measurement: New measures to model decision making (Presidential address to the Econometric Society)
Other editing & consulting
Edited How to get industrial policy right – and wrong (Financial Times)
Edit & manage The Agency Fund’s blog series
Edit & write for Yale’s Economic Growth Center & Inclusion Economics, including research briefs & summaries, profiles, annual reports, and interviews
Edit & contribute to nonprofit strategy documents (e.g., dZi Foundation)
Other projects
VAD Foundation: As its first employee and then a board member, I’ve helped grow this nonprofit’s education and community development programs in South Sudan, co-founded by Valentino Achak Deng & author Dave Eggers using book proceeds from What Is the What.
Sad Stuff on the Street: Humor blog with author Sloane Crosley that became a charity coffee table book designed by Todd Oldham, featuring hundreds of contributors – including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Amy Sedaris, Salman Rushdie, Miranda July, Michael Chabon, Ben Gibbard, and Jesse Eisenberg – with 100% of proceeds supporting the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Wordless collective: A side project for music without lyrics for working, reading, and writing.
While working in publishing, I helped edit and contributed to a bunch of wonderful books, magazines, and other publications, including the nonfiction oral-history book Out of Exile (Voice of Witness), the literary journal McSweeney’s Quarterly, the short story anthology Stumbling & Raging (MacAdam/Cage), and The Believer magazine.