Katrina is a post-doctoral fellow with the Development Strategy and Governance Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL) South Asia. She is an applied microeconomist working at the intersection of development economics, political economy, and public economics. Katrina holds a Ph.D. in Political Economics and an M.A. in Economics from Stanford University. Her dissertation studies various aspects of the political economy of publicly-provided goods: how governments allocate public revenues between goods with and without private sector substitutes; the effects of water privatization on child health; and the effects of inter-governmental competition on income and growth. Her current research studies the causes and effects of government policies that have large impacts on vulnerable groups, with particular attention to the institutions that incentivize investments in human development. Before joining IFPRI, Katrina spent over five years working with organizations including the Human Development Group at the World Bank, the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, the U.S. Department of State, and the Development Research Group at the World Bank.

Awards

• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (Economics), 2006 – 2010
• Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research Dissertation Fellowship, 2010 – 2011
• Best Paper Award, NYU Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy Conference, 2008
• Fulbright Fellowship for research in Ecuador, 2003
• Grant, Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) Workshop, 2010
• Grant, Ronald Coase Institute Workshop on Institutional Analysis, 2008
• Outstanding Undergraduate Honors Thesis Award, 2003