I am an associate professor in the Food and Resource Economics Department within the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) at the University of Florida, where I am also a faculty affiliate the Tropical Conservation and Development Program and the Global Food Systems Institute. My research sits at the intersection of development, environmental, and agricultural economics, and is motivated by a single question: what keeps farmers in low- and middle-income countries from adopting the technologies, practices, and financial tools that would make them more productive and more resilient?

Much of my work uses field and lab-in-the-field experiments, randomized controlled trials, and discrete choice experiments to measure how farmers actually value and respond to these tools — rather than how we assume they do. Recent and ongoing projects examine rural financial markets and the bundling of agricultural credit with insurance, risk-contingent credit, stress-tolerant crop varieties, soil conservation and smart subsidy design, farm mechanization, water resource management and irrigation pricing, and the gendered dimensions of access to credit and technology. Across these areas I am particularly interested in heterogeneity: in preferences, in learning, and in constraints within the household, since interventions that work on average often fail for the people who need them most.

I have carried out fieldwork across South Asia — including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan — as well as in China and in sub-Saharan Africa, with projects in Malawi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. This work has produced more than forty peer-reviewed articles in journals including the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, World Development, Food Policy, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Economic Development and Cultural Change, and the Review of Income and Wealth.

Before joining the University of Florida in 2022, I was on the faculty of the Master of Environmental Policy program at Duke Kunshan University (DKU) in China, where I served as acting director of the program and as its director of graduate studies. Prior to that I was a research fellow in the Environment and Production Technology Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), based in New Delhi and Washington, DC, where I remain a non-resident fellow. I hold a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Purdue University, an M.A. in economics from Indiana University, and a B.S. from Purdue University.

Teaching and mentoring

At the University of Florida I teach undergraduate courses on quantitative methods and development policy to undergraduates and a doctoral course on econometrics. I have also previously taught an undergraduate course on computational analysis using R and a graduate course on managerial economics. While at DKU, I taught courses on environmental policy analysis and environmental economics. I currently chair and serve on doctoral and master’s committees in the Food and Resource Economics Department, advise Masters of Agribusiness students, and mentor early-career researchers through the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association mentorship program. I have also led short courses and trainings on impact evaluation, causal inference, choice modeling, and experimental valuation methods for research and development organizations including the International Rice Research Institute, the International Potato Center, CIMMYT, and partner institutions in Malawi.

Research funding

I have served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on projects funded by the Center for Effective Global Action’s Digital Credit Observatory, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), the International Growth Centre, and IFPRI’s Strategic Innovations Fund. I have also contributed to large multi-institutional research programs supported by the Gates Foundationand the U.S. Agency for International Development, including the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) and Technical Assistance and Research for Indian Nutrition and Agriculture (TARINA).

Editorial and professional service

I currently serve as an associate editor for the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Economics, and previously served as an associate editor for Environment and Development Economics and the China Economic Review. I am also an external member of the IFPRI Publications Review Committee. Within the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association I have served as topic leader for the Research Methods/Econometrics/Statistics Section and as secretary/treasurer of the China Section. I am a member of the American Economic Association, the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association, the International Association of Agricultural Economists, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.