EGC Quarterly Newsletter, Fall 2026: A Community of Development

Jie Zhou on data centers and digital policy
Jie Zhou, a joint Postdoctoral Fellow at the Economic Growth Center and the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, researches topics in digital economics, political economy, trade, and industrial organization. Using large-scale data and structural modeling, she asks how factors such as digital infrastructure and government policy influence market outcomes in a rapidly changing global landscape.

Is contract risk slowing down the green revolution?
In a recent paper, EGC affiliate Nicholas Ryan uses a novel dataset to assess the effects of counterparty risk on India’s solar market. The study analyzes solar auctions that were run at the same time: some were run by risky state utilities that often fail to pay their bills and others were intermediated by the central government. He finds that state-level solar auctions – compared to those intermediated by the central government – result in higher prices and less investment. The paper sheds new light on how counterparty risk can “hold up” renewable energy investments, with potentially large implications for the fight against climate change. 

Can digital marketplaces reduce barriers to trade?
Research by EGC affiliate Lauren Bergquist examines how a mobile trading platform that increased access to information and helped match buyers and sellers affected trade in agricultural markets. In a large-scale experiment in Uganda, the platform increased trade flows and price convergence, generating welfare gains. These gains came primarily through use by professional traders rather than farmers, and through the platform matching buyers with sellers, rather than through sharing price information. 

Robert Evenson, the farmer-scholar who brought agricultural economics to Yale
In 1974, Yale students staged hunger strikes and teach-ins to raise awareness of global hunger. One of the lasting effects was the return of farmer-turned-economist Robert Evenson to Yale, where he would spent the next 30 years working to help feed the world.

Yale Climate, Energy, and Growth Conference 2026
For the first time, the world's largest emerging economies — India, Brazil, China, Indonesia — are simultaneously designing national carbon markets and confronting the same unresolved questions: how to set credible baselines, how to bring nature-based assets into compliance systems, and how to structure the financial instruments that will move private capital into clean energy at scale.

The Yale Economic Growth Center's Climate, Energy, and Growth Conference 2026 brings together leading economists, senior government officials, and practitioners from these countries — alongside experts from established markets in the EU and the United States — to work through these questions together. Conference sessions will include both academic research presentations and direct policy discussion.

Experimental Economics Workshop on Gender Norms, Attitudes, and Development
The Experimental Economics Workshop is organized twice a year by the Experimental Economics Initiative and brings together top scholars to present new research in a smaller venue for workshopping. This workshop features research on gender norms, attitudes, and development.

Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg Honored with 2026 Bodossaki Excellence Award
Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, the William Nordhaus Professor of Economics and Global Affairs at Yale University, has received the 2026 Bodossaki Excellence Award in Social Sciences.

Economic Growth Center Joins New Initiative for Climate Economics
During a week of record heat across Europe, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago launched the Economics of Climate Organization (ECO) at London Climate Action Week. The initiative unites working groups established at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, who are applying advances in economics, finance, and global climate policy to build scalable solutions that work for high- and low-income countries. 

Rohini Pande, Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University is on the Executive Committee of ECO, which also includes experts from Columbia University, LSE, PUC-Rio, University of Chicago, and MIT.

Espín-Sánchez and Ryan on modeling the predictive nature of praying for rain; Mobarak on the effect of remittance frictions on seasonal poverty; Neilson on the link between admission to elite college programs and long-term social status; Ryan on counterparty risk in the Indian solar power market.