Murphy-Economics Seminar: Kevin Donovan (Yale)

The Murphy Institute Seminar Series in Economics

Each semester The Murphy Institute sponsors a series of seminars organized by the Tulane Department of Economics that provides an opportunity for faculty, researchers, and practitioners to present their latest research and pressing issues related to topics in political economy. Research presented covers all aspects of contemporary economics, including the economics of education, health economics, and public economics, as well as in economic history, international economics, and core areas in political economy.  Papers are distributed one week beforehand to the participants who read the paper and prepare discussion questions for the presenter.

Kevin Donovan is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Yale School of Management and Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. He works in the fields of economic growth and development, with current work focusing on the relationship between labor markets frictions and economic growth and the importance of rural infrastructure in developing countries. He has conducted field work in Kenya, Nicaragua, Rwanda, and Uganda and his research has appeared in leading economic journals, including Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Review of Economic Studies, among others.

In addition to his academic affiliations, he co-leads the Agriculture Program at the Structural Change and Economic Growth Consortium (STEG), an FCDO-funded research initiative to design and implement strategies that facilitate growth in developing countries. He has worked as an external consultant for the International Labor Organization on the “Future of Work” in developing countries and for the World Bank on a variety of topics including microenterprise growth and infrastructure development. He is also affiliated with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), the Yale Economic Growth Center, the Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-RISE).