Employer: University of Southern California
The Role:
The Research Fellow will provide analytical research support to a portfolio of studies conducted through the University of Southern California, which is working with Yale University on a body of applied microeconomic research projects in Bihar, India. These studies focus on reducing barriers to women’s interactions with the formal financial system and ensuring that government social protection programs, notably the NREGS workfare program, engage and empower rural women.
Reporting to USC’s Dr. Simone Schaner, Assistant Professor (Research) of Economics, the Fellow will support Dr. Schaner and other researchers, along with Fellows and staff at Yale University and Inclusion Economics India Centre at IFMR/Krea University, to design, pilot, test, and potentially scale promising interventions. Strong candidates will have sound data and analytical skills and training in economics and applied econometrics. Successful candidates should be able to interact effectively with teams across different cultures and time zones, engage effectively with counterparts at all levels, support field activities with both implementation and data inputs, and support Dr. Schaner’s work more broadly. The Fellow will be based at USC, with travel to India.
Responsibilities:
- Working directly with India-based counterparts, support formative piloting work through contributing to questionnaires, developing appropriate protocols and quality checks, and participating in scoping activities to determine appropriate design of proposed studies
- Contribute to institutional human subjects (IRB) proposals and modifications, ensuring protocols proposed are appropriate and applied
- Scrape, process, and clean large administrative datasets from public websites
- Clean and process secondary datasets (e.g., household surveys) for analysis
- Participate in survey design and data collection activities, including designing and coding questionnaires and related forms for digital data collection, and setting up and running data quality checks for large-scale data collection activities
- Prepare appropriate documentation and guidelines for all data and field-related activities
- Contribute to pre-analysis plans, papers, and other written material, upon request
- Prepare literature reviews per request of senior researchers
- Draft policy briefs and presentations, presenting research evidence in a compelling and policy-forward format, and effectively representing the research to external stakeholders
- Contribute to regular reports and presentations for donor audiences
- Coordinate with project teams to ensure timely submission of deliverables, as well as provide support to field staff as necessary
- Other duties, as required
Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelors or Master’s degree in economics or a related field
- Proven analytical skills and proficiency in Stata or R (Stata preferred)
- Solid understanding of randomized controlled trials and program evaluation
- Strong interest in public policy and economic development
- Excellent oral and written English skills
- Proficiency in the Microsoft Office suite
- Mature, self-directed, with the ability to multitask and meet deadlines
Desired Qualifications:
- Advanced coursework in econometrics
- Basic skills in Python
- Experience living or working India; knowledge of an Indian language an asset
- Data collection and field research experience
- Knowledge of poverty and gender issues a plus
How to Apply:
If you are interested in this position, please upload application materials through the USC jobs site AND fill out our Screening Questionnaire; you will be asked to upload a single PDF containing your CV, statement of interest, and academic transcript(s). Label your file “Last name, First name – Research Fellow - USC”.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.