Sample Research Statement For Faculty Position PDF Free Download

Sample Research Statement For Faculty Position PDF Download Info

I Am A Post-doctoral Fellow At Harvard University’s Iqss. I Am Interested In Adding To Our Understanding Of Individual Decisionmaking. Individuals Depart From Perfect Rationality Persons, And Human Behavior Is Often Driven By A Vast Array Of Factors, Making It Hard To Determine Underlying Causalities.

I Depend On Field, Lab, And Lab-in-the-field Experiments In An Effort To Better Understand Economic Decisionmaking And Its Psychological Underpinnings. I Also Design Survey Tools And Analyze Large Panel Data Sets, Yielding Insights That Inform Theory As Well As Real-world Decision Makers In The Fields Of Public Policy And Management.

Sample Research Statement For Faculty Position PDF

Most Of My Current Work Relies On Field And Lab-in-the-field Experiments Testing Insights From Behavioral And Classical Economics In The Contexts Of Economic Development In Sub-saharan Africa And The Creation Of Innovation Contests In The United States And Abroad.

Structure Of This Statement Of Research : The First Section Discusses My Work In Development Economics And Public Policy, Focusing On My Dissertation Papers. Work In The Field Of Contests And Management During My Post-doctoral Period Is Covered Under The Second Section. Plans For Future Research In Their Respective Fields Are Presented In Both The Sections.

My Two Dissertation Chapters, Together Comprising My First Job Market Paper, Are The Result Of Experiments Conducted In Malawi To Test Social Norms.

The First Chapter Of My Dissertation Explores The Extent To Which Culture Is A Co-determinant Of Economic Growth By Looking At The Prevalence Of Six Richly Discussed Distributive Justice Norms In Poor Rural Communities Of Malawi. I Undertake This By A Field-based Laboratory Experiment In A One-shot Two-person Dictator Game With A Production Phase. More Specifically, Sorting Beans Gave Subjects The Option To Generate Social Surplus.

Once The Subject Sorters Had Made Their Decisions, The Dictator—randomly Selected—would Reveal The Social Surplus Created Between The Two Matched Players. In Any Case, Any Subject Could Return Even All Of The Unsorted Beans In Exchange For Cash That Would Remain Separate And Belong To The Subject. This Varied—the Subjects Faced Different Rates Of Return On Sorting, That Is, Different Amounts Of Beans Available To Sort And, In Some Treatments, Unexpected Income Shocks Occurred After Their Sorting Decisions.

I Find That A Multiplicity Of Norms Balanced With Self-interest Leads To Decisions Strikingly, Subjects In My Sample Respond As Intuitively Expected To All Experimental Variations, In Spite Of The Strong Influence That Strict Egalitarianism Exerts On Sharing Behaviour. More Precisely, Subjects Compensate Themselves And Others For Income Shocks And Few Opportunities To Exert Effort, Rewarding Their Own And Others’ Efforts, Considering Relative Rates Of Return.

In This Acquired Knowledge, Culture Actually Matters A Lot And Acts As The Intermediary Or Intervening Variable Among The Participating Actors, Including The State, And Relates To The Distribution Of Rewards Received. In Environments With Few Or No Formal Institutions, It Can Be Argued That Somewhat Closer Linkage Between Distributive Justice Norms And Redistributive Outcomes Is Present.

Norms, Therefore, Provide More Immediate Incentives For Effort-based Production, Hence Jointly Deciding Which Productive Activities Are Valued In Society And Whether They Should Be Discouraged In These Kinds Of Environments. In This Context, It Has Often Been Noted That Egalitarian Norms Impede The Emergence Of Entrepreneurial Activity In The Rural Areas Of Developing Countries.

Even Though The Relative Prevalence Of These Norms May Be Relevant In The Context Of Rural Development, Earlier Experimental Research On Sharing Behavior In Developing Countries Has Rarely Been Designed To Capture Different Distributive Justice Norms. In This Way, A Set Of Variables—common Both In The Laboratory And In The Field—are Mapped Into An Optimal Distribution Of Effort-generated Income By Norms.

Determining The Underlying Norms Of Distributive Justice, Therefore—one Of The Necessary Conditions For Gaining Insight Into The Impact Of Cultural Values On Output And, Thereby, Development—is Instrumental In Improving The Strength Of Generalization And External Validity Of The Findings. Thus, This Chapter Is More Informative Than The Extant Literature, For Typically, Studies On Distributive Justice Norms Did Not Examine The Effort-generated Income.

Those Who Did Relied On A Design That Asked Subjects To Invest A Fraction Of Any Windfall Gain They Receive At Some Point During The Experiment That Is Likely A Poor Proxy For Income Earned Through Effort. These Omissions May Be Serious In The Development Context For The Reasons Described Above.

Depending On The Setting And The Framework Of Values Being Considered, It Might Still Be Very Hard To Infer What Difference Values Will Finally Make To Behavior, At Least In The Medium To Longer Term, Because The Norms By Which People Are Co Controled Cannot Be Assumed To Be Independent Of The Persons.

I Shall Introduce A Distinction Between Two Possible Kinds Of Norm Sharing In The Second Chapter Of This Thesis, At A Conceptual Level: Completely Internalized And Domain Specific To Some Informational Environment. This Chapter Generalizes The Experimental Framework Of The First Chapter To Imperfect Information About Pie Size And Dictator’s Share On The Recipient’s Side. Together With The First Chapter, It Formed The Basis For My First Job Market Paper.

This Paper Will Examine The Factors Behind The Frequency Of Equitable Distribution Of Effort-generated Income And, In General, Explain How Subjects Coordinate Their Behavior Between Self-interest And Norm Compliance Once The Subject’s Degree Of Norm Compliance Can No Longer Be Perfectly Monitored.

I Find That When Information Is Incomplete, Dictators Act More Self-servingly, Deviating Even More From The Various Distributive Justice Norms In Situations When Doing So Would Not Harm Their Reputation.

This Finding Is Important For Two Reasons That Help Us Interpret The Findings Of The First Chapter: Community Structures Are Changing Rapidly In The Developing World-think Internal And Out-migration, Remittances, And Increased Financial Infrastructure Such As Bank Accounts. The Latter Would Predict More Abrupt Changes In Sharing Behavior In The Former Case, When Norms Are Domainspecific To Some Particular Informational Environment.

The Third Chapter Of My Dissertation, Written Jointly With My Colleagues At The University Of Michigan, The Ipa, And The World Bank, Reflects Lessons Learned From A Randomized Field Experiment In Rural Malawi In Which I Briefly Improved Market Access For Previously Isolated Areas Through Regular Subsidized Transport. Development Economics Research Is Focusing More On The Cost Of Isolation.

Investments In Rural Roads Have Been Identified As A Means Where Households Can Overcome Spatial Poverty Traps. Most Of The Investments Carried Out Over The Last Few Decades In Sub-saharan Africa Have Been Assuming That Donors And Governments Would, Out Of Economic Necessity, End Up Constructing Motorized Vehicle-passable Market Transportation, And In Doing So, Reduce Poverty And Generate Income. However, There Is Insufficient Empirical Evidence To Confirm The Given Statements, Whereby There Is No Information From Randomized Field Experiments Capable Of Estimating The Profitability Of Various Routes.

This Paper Reports Results From The First Randomized Experiment Of Its Kind In Sub-saharan Africa. The Experiment Shows That Access To Better Road Conditions Does Not Automatically Imply That Villagers Will Have Access To Affordable Transportation. In Other Words, A Bus Provider, If Relying On Take-up, Will Never Be Able To Cover Costs On These Routes At Any Price. That Subsidized Transportation Was Offered Regularly Over The Entire Six Months Reinforces This Result.

This Contrasts Greatly With A Very Common Real-world Situation In Which A Bus Operator All Too Frequently Cannot Afford To Spend More Than A Matter Of Several Days Prospecting A New Area. In That Case, The Actual Demand To Be Realized At The Instance Of A Regular Transportation Supply Might Be Much Higher Relative To The Demand Observed Over The Scouting Period Because Of Potential Customers Incorrectly Anticipating The Transportation Supply.

The End Result Would Be That The Potential Demand For The Transportation Service Was Underestimated By The Bus Provider, Which Subsequently Results In A Decision Not To Offer Services On A Route That Promises To Be Profitable In Terms Of Potential Demand.

We Can Conclude Therefore In Our Case True Demand Was Demonstrated, But That A Bus Operator Cannot Make A Profit On These Routes Because A Regular Pattern Of Bus Times Was Signaled To All Potential Users And Was Operated By The Transport Provider.

This Has Huge Implications For Public Policy And Explains Why Many Rural Roads In Quite Good Condition Are Now Closed To Motorised Traffic.

It Helps Policy Makers Design Solutions That Genuinely Have The Impact Of Improving Access To Markets By Providing Them With Better Reasons Why, Despite Large Infrastructure Investments.

The Expected Gains In Terms Of Market Access Often Have Not Materialized, And Consequently, Improved Knowledge Of What Information Needs To Be Collected To Be Able To Precisely Assess If Spending On Rural Roads Would Crowd Out Investments In Other Sectors That Might Have More Significant Impacts On Social And Economic Development.