CID's PhD affiliates represent the next generation of leading thinkers dedicated to building a thriving world for all.
By CID Staff
This year's cohort of PhD candidates on the academic job market bring cutting-edge insights to the field of international development research. Their work explores how social networks, governance systems, and evidence-based policies can drive more inclusive and resilient societies across the globe.
As they enter the 2025-2026 academic job market, we’re proud to introduce seven emerging scholars whose innovative and data-driven research is expanding the frontier of knowledge in international development, education, public sector governance, development economics, and beyond.
Raúl Duarte: PhD Candidate in Political Economy and Government, Harvard University
Job Market Paper: Patronage Hierarchies and Tax Collection
Why do bureaucracies underperform despite reform attempts? I study Paraguay’s customs using data on ~300,000 shipment inspections and develop a new measure that infers patronage hires (those hired based on partisanship rather than merit) from political appointment cycles. When both the frontline inspector and their port administrator are patronage hires (“patronage pairs”), oversight breaks down: they detect less customs fraud, more often miss fraud later found by headquarter audits, and deviate more often from prescribed random inspector assignment to shipments. Their detection also drops more on high-workload days, and even when they detect fraud, the tax adjustments they impose are smaller for comparable products. These results show how patronage hierarchies undermine tax collection and state capacity.
Read Raúl's job market paper.
Raúl Duarte
Raúl Duarte
Raúl Duarte is a PhD candidate in Political Economy & Government at Harvard Kennedy School and a CID PhD Affiliate. His work spans political economy, economic development, comparative politics, and public finance. With research forthcoming in the Review of Economic Studies and a revise-and-resubmit at the Journal of Politics, he studies state capacity, corruption, applied machine learning, social networks, electoral integrity, and clientelism.
Sandra El Hadi: PhD Candidate in Education and Human Development with a secondary in Mind, Brain, and Behavior at Harvard University
Job Market Paper: Multilingualism and malleability of verbal abilities: Parents’ practices and beliefs about learning two languages in early childhood
This paper examines how parents’ beliefs about their children’s verbal abilities are related to their language-related practices at home. Using data from families raising multilingual children, we find that parents who view their children's verbal abilities as more malleable - rather than "fixed" - are more likely to report reading to their children in their second language. By uncovering how parental mindsets influence home learning practices, this work highlights an important lever for improving home language environments and supporting children's multilingual development.
Read Sandra's job market paper.
Sandra El Hadi
Sandra El Hadi
Sandra El Hadi is in her final year of the PhD in Education and Human Development with a secondary in Mind, Brain, and Behavior at Harvard University. Her research interests lie primarily in early childhood education, developmental psychology, and language learning. She has led mixed-methods studies in the USA and France, where she explores how parents' beliefs and home language practices shape children's language outcomes.
Gabriella Fleischman: PhD Candidate in Public Policy, Harvard University
Job Market Paper: Economic and Psychological Returns to Social Relationships: Alleviating Constraints to Network Formation in Malawi
Social connections are associated with both economic and psychological well-being, but the causal effects of social connection are difficult to study. Furthermore, networks are segmented and unequal, implying they can reinforce inequities. In an environment where social networks fill the role of the social safety net, what happens to people with few or weak social connections? I interrogate the constraints that rural migrant women in Malawi face to social connection, the economic and psychological effects of network linking, and the trade-offs women face in determining with whom to create social ties. Within just one month of an intervention that facilitates meal-sharing between migrant women, participants are 25% more likely to earn income from self-employment relative to control. One year later, they experience improvements in food security and a large reduction in depression. Women who invite wealthier guests drive the results on self-employment and food security, while women who invite other poor guests drive the results on depression reductions, underscoring the value of economically diverse networks.
Read Gabriella's job market paper.
Gabriella Fleischman
Gabriella Fleischman
Gabriella Fleischman is a Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy (Economics Track) at Harvard University. She is driven to understand the economic consequences of social and cultural inclusion of marginalized groups, especially as it relates to their health and labor market opportunities. She studies these issues through the lens of development economics, health economics, and the economics of social networks.
Tilman Graff: Phd Candidate in Economics (Development Economics and Macroeconomics), Harvard University
Job Market Paper: Depreciation and Growth: Evidence from Machine Repair in Uganda
The cost of keeping machines in good condition is a central component of economic growth, yet little is known about whether it is different in developing countries, and why. In this paper, I aim to fill this gap both empirically and theoretically. I first conduct a large-scale survey of capital-intensive microenterprises in Uganda, measuring all kinds of expenses they make to keep their machines repaired and maintained. I find that firms pay around twice as much per unit of equipment as comparable firms in the US. This is particularly severe in remote areas and for small firms. I then build and estimate a model of the capital repair market to explain these facts. Intuitively, machine repair is expensive if it is hardly ever needed. Using the model, I show that whether or not the repair market works well can explain around 9% of income differences across Uganda, as well as offer new insights into how important physical capital is in accounting for global variations in prosperity and growth.
Visit Tilman's website.
Tilman Graff
Tilman Graff
Tilman Graff is a PhD student in Economics at Harvard University. His research explores a range of issues in macro and development economics.
Grace Michel: PhD Candidate in Public Policy, Harvard University
Job Market Paper: The Social Architecture of Healing: Peer Structure in Trauma Recovery
In low-resource settings, trauma is a major barrier to learning, yet access to mental health services is scarce. I conducted a randomized controlled trial in 12 schools in Zimbabwe to test the effectiveness of a peer-led trauma recovery program, the Freedom Clubs, and teacher training in trauma-sensitive pedagogy. The study combined survey, administrative, and peer network data to show that Freedom Clubs improved psychosocial well-being, with effects strongest at higher levels of participation and varying non-linearly with peer group closeness. The results demonstrate how stigma and group composition condition program effectiveness, offering insight into how social structures can shape trauma-informed education in resource-constrained contexts.
Read Grace's job market paper.
Grace Michel
Grace Michel
Grace Michel is a Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy at Harvard University. Her research lies at the intersection of development, behavioral, and labor economics, with a focus on the behavioral motivations behind economic decisions in low-income countries and how these motivations affect the effectiveness of programs and policies.
Kartik Srivastava: PhD Candidate in Development Economics & Labor Economics, Harvard Kennedy School
Job Market Paper: Familiar Strangers: Evidence from Referral-Based Hiring Experiments in India
In many developing country labor markets, jobs are filled overwhelmingly through employee referrals, which can entrench inequality by privileging well-connected workers. This paper studies a large Indian manufacturing firm where referral invitations were experimentally redirected to minority lower caste incumbent workers. This shift raised lower caste employment by 62%, reduced monthly turnover by 41%, and boosted team output by 5%, with no loss in cohesion. A complementary lab-in-field experiment shows that the mode of recruitment—not entrant identity—determines whether diversity hurts or helps teamwork. Supervisors learned from exposure to lower caste hiring, continuing to allocate referrals to them preferentially even after the intervention ended. Referral-based hiring of underrepresented groups can therefore both expand opportunities for these workers and improve firm performance.
Read Kartik's job market paper.
Listen to Kartik discuss his research.
Kartik Srivastava
Kartik Srivastava
Kartik Srivastava is a PhD candidate at Harvard University's Kennedy School. His research is in development economics, labor economics, and political economy.
Shreya Tandon: PhD Candidate in Political Economy and Government, Harvard University
Job Market Paper: Into the Unknown: Job Exploration Risk and Spousal Co-working in India
In many developing countries, workplaces feature harsh work environments, especially for women. Limited information about working conditions makes job-switching risky. Using new surveys and three experiments in India’s garment sector, I show that women manage risk by “co-working” with their husbands and investigate employer responses. 46% of married women work in the same factory as their spouse, despite living near hundreds of employers. Co-working raises women’s job mobility relative to searching alone: husbands typically vet factories alone before referring their wives, and the husband's presence offsets workplace disamenities. However, when couples co-work in low-quality factories, job lock may emerge. Since husbands hesitate to move alone in search of better opportunities, couples must stay unless they can coordinate a joint move. Employers anticipate lower turnover among couples than other job seekers, and demonstrate a strong preference for hiring them.
Read Shreya's job market paper.
Shreya Tandon
Shreya Tandon
Shreya Tandon is a PhD Candidate in Political Economy and Government (Economics Track) at Harvard University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of development economics, labor economics, and public economics.
Image Credits
Header image credit: Miguel Reyes
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