Katrina Kosec is a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit and a Lecturer in Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University.
She received her Ph.D. in Political Economics and her M.A. in Economics from Stanford University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in Economics. She also holds a B.Sc. in International Political Economy from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
Her research focuses on the linkages between governance, fragility, gender, and poverty. One strand of work investigates the impacts of government policies and public sector incentives on poverty, food security, women’s empowerment, and individuals’ attitudes and aspirations. A second considers the drivers of women’s voice and influence beyond the household, considering the roles of policies, interventions led by NGO and civil society actors, climate change, and economic shocks.
She has designed and carried out surveys and field experiments in Pakistan, India, Nepal, Tanzania, Mali, Malawi, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kenya, and Papua New Guinea in collaboration with various international agencies including the World Bank, the IGC, GIZ, 3ie, WVI, ActionAid, and USAID, as well as with government and local NGO partners.
She is a member of the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) network and serves on the Executive Committee of the Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). In 2023, she co-led IFPRI’s flagship annual publication, the Global Food Policy Report, on the topic of “Rethinking Food Crisis Responses.”
Her work has been published in journals including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, Nature Climate Change, the Journal of Health Economics, World Politics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, and World Development. It has also been featured in the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and NPR, and cited by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
