Research Motivation

I’m drawn to development economics because I care about how inequality persists and how institutional and social structures shape people’s lives, especially in marginalized communities. This interest is personal. I have ties to Himalayan regions where many families face constraints around education, gender roles, and access to opportunities. I’m particularly interested in how people form beliefs about the value of education while facing trade-offs that are often invisible in high-level models.

My interest in economics began in high school after watching a documentary in my AP economics class. It explored the unintended consequences of global consumption and how well-meaning interventions in low-income countries can backfire, undermining local economies and harming the environment. That experience stayed with me and pushed me to study externalities, incentive systems, and the structural forces behind economic outcomes.

As an undergraduate, I completed an honors thesis advised by Professor Taylor Jaworski, where I examined the impact of wildfires on county-level house prices across the U.S. That experience sharpened my empirical skills and deepened my interest in applying economic tools to real-world problems.

At the core, I’ve always been motivated by understanding how people make decisions in constrained environments. Economic models are imperfect, but I value how they combine formal structure with data to uncover patterns and test ideas. That’s what drew me to research. I wanted to develop the tools to analyze inequality, evaluate interventions, and contribute to better policy.

Over time, this motivation has become more focused. I’m especially interested in how aspirations are shaped, not just by individual preferences, but by broader social, institutional, and informational contexts. I’ve been exploring what kinds of interventions, including NGO-led programs, can shift educational and occupational trajectories in communities like those I’m connected to. I’m also thinking about the role of businesses and technological change in shaping environmental outcomes, and more recently, how AI is influencing economic behavior and access to information. I’m interested in who benefits from these systems and what kinds of guardrails or design choices might help ensure they don’t exacerbate existing disparities.