I study how information moves through mass media and social networks, and how it changes economic and social behavior. I use field experiments, natural experiments, administrative records, and survey data to examine technology adoption, political behavior, social connection, gender, health, and wellbeing. I teach and build tools that make complex systems inspectable.
The standard is simple: define the world, identify the load-bearing elements, state the mechanism, test it against data. The purpose is simpler: Advance the frontier and improve society.
Studying and Writing
I study how information travels through mass media and social networks, shaping technology adoption, political behavior, social connection, gender, and wellbeing. The work combines field experiments, natural experiments, administrative records, and survey data, principally from India.
Instructing and Advising
I teach microeconomics, econometrics, and development economics through frontier research, empirical reasoning, and hands-on analysis. Students learn to use economic models and causal evidence, then judge precisely what those tools can—and cannot—establish about the social world.
Designing and Building
I build tools that make difficult systems inspectable: translating concepts across disciplines, opening the computations inside a transformer, exploring Unicode, resolving disputes, playing with hieroglyphs, and creating shared rooms where artificial intelligences can work together productively.
Producing and Opining
I make reels, stories, and join panels that extend these questions beyond academic forms—from the digital afterlife of Egyptian hieroglyphs to bodies, memory, and social roles. The aim is compressed thought with enough room for surprise.
Joking and Jabbing
I write and develop stand-up without live performance, treating each set as a structure to test, tighten, and adapt to the room. This section will eventually hold selected material, no recordings.
In development.
Appreciating and Reviewing
I keep a dated record of films with compact reviews that treat cinema as argument, craft, and social world. The writing preserves the immediate experience of watching while tracing recurring interests across genres, countries, and periods. I also review academic work, serving repeatedly on the scientific committee for the Midwest International Economic Development Conference and refereeing across economics and interdisciplinary journals.