Backstory: How Research Papers in Economics Get Made

Riccardo talks to Fulvia Budillon, a PhD candidate in Economics at UC San Diego currently on the job market. Fulvia discusses the backstory of her job market paper, “Beyond Access: Facility Birth, Healthcare Use and Early-Life Mortality in Malawi.”The conversation begins in the field, where Fulvia—through qualitative work, conversations, and failed attempts—arrives at her current research question and identification strategy. It then moves to the “middle stage” of the process: dataset construction, cleaning, and working with large administrative data. Finally, it circles back to the field, which is part of the reason Fulvia is drawn to development and health topics: behind the data she studies are real people whose health is shaped in meaningful ways by the circumstances they live in.You can find the link to Fulvia’s paper here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yCLMf3jxV-1gEMX5C_4h2TUeKSNVw9G-/viewTo learn more about our wonderful candidate, you can visit her website: https://www.fulviabudillon.com/home-page

Riccardo speaks with Ariel Zucker, Assistant Professor of Economics at UC Santa Cruz, about her paper “Price Incentives for Conservation: Experimental Evidence from Groundwater Irrigation.”The conversation explores the logistical challenges of running a large-scale field intervention, the lessons learned from multiple pilot attempts, and the trade-offs graduate students often face when conducting fieldwork on a tight budget. It concludes with a broader reflection on what draws Ariel to her field of research and to academia more generally.You can find the working paper (coauthored with Nick Hagerty) here: https://www.arielzucker.net/_files/ugd/2eee53_ed03d0df4bfb4e5694b95deb022c6768.pdf

Mikey speaks with Lauren Falcao Bergquist, an assistant professor of economics and global affairs at Yale. Lauren talks about how and why she studies agriculture in developing countries, the challenges that entails, and how she and her co-authors overcome those challenges in her new paper on Ugandan coffee farmers and their supply chains.

Precious speaks with Paul Christian, an Economist in the Development Impact (DIME) Department at the World Bank, whose research explores how agricultural and food security programs can better target and manage irrigation and subsidy projects across the Global South. Paul shares the story behind his paper “Shaping Productive and Progressive Agricultural Subsidies in Mozambique,” which examines how the design of subsidy price schedules can influence both productivity and equity. He reflects on what first drew him to agricultural economics, how to design field experiments that balance rigor with real-world relevance, and why open-mindedness and opportunism matter in development research.

Santiago speaks with Dean Spears, a Professor at University of Texas at Austin. Dean shares the backstory of his new book with Michael Geruso. He tells us how he bridges working across economics, demography and ethics and why he thinks we should all engage in the topic of depopulation. His new book is available here: https://deanspears.net/books/after-the-spike-population-progress-and-the-case-for-people/