Me = Research ∪ Teaching ∪ (Research ∪ Teaching)c

As a researcher, my interests are in development economics, particularly in higher education, entrepreneurship, and digital payments. A common theme is to identify interventions or policy tools that can address challenges and constraints highlighted in these areas in a sub-Saharan African context. 

See more on my research below and the research tab for summaries of papers, ongoing projects, and grants. The courses I teach at Mount Holyoke and my rolling non-academic book list are below.

Research

My research in higher education aims to increase our understanding of the factors and challenges that influence the decision-making of prospective college applicants on whether to attend college and what programs to major in. The two challenges I am exploring now are information frictions and financial constraints. Ultimately, I hope to identify interventions and policy tools that can enhance decision-making of college bound students and relax their financial constraints.

In entrepreneurship, I am focusing on understanding and relaxing the constraints to increasing growth and productivity of micro and small-sized firms and exploring ways to identify and target business support to constrained potential high growth firms. A growing interest in understanding and relaxing the constraints of these firms is also to explore factors that promote the adoption of digital financial payment methods, especially through mobile money.

In my research work, I often leverage quasi- experiments created by education policies and examine large data sets and employ field experiments for primary data to address my research questions.

Teaching

I currently teach three classes at Mount Holyoke College:

  1. Economic Development (ECON 213) – Fall 2024

  2. Development Economics in Africa (ECON 349-DV) – Spring 2024, Spring 2025

  3. Introductory Economics (ECON 110) – Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023

A Glimpse Beyond Academia

Reading List

Some all-time favorites

  1. The Bible

  2. Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God by Henry and Richard Blackaby and Claude King

  3. The Practice of the Presence of God - Brother Lawrence

  4. The Pursuit of God - A W Tozer

  5. True Spirituality - Francis Shaeffer

  6. Mark of the Lion Trilogy - Francine Rivers

  7. This Present Darkness - Frank Peretti

  8. Piercing the Darkness - Frank Peretti

  9. The Autobiography of George Müller - George Müller

  10. Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

2025 Books - In Progress

  1. That Incredible Christian - A. W. Tozer

  2. Lead Me, Holy Spirit - Stormie Omartian

  3. Lead Like Jesus Revisited - Ken Blanchard, Phil Hodges Phyllis Hendry

  4. Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi