Associate Professor - Economics, Michigan State University. PhD @Columbia @SIPASusDev; MA @iuj_en Japan; BEngg NIT Surat, India. from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh.
Michigan, USA
Joined February 2012
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Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
I guess we're ranked so high in undergraduate econometrics because we teach our seniors staggered diff-in-diffs.
msutoday.msu.edu/news/2026/0…
Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
I'm hiring an economics predoc at @ColumbiaSIPA, generally on applied micro projects, but with a large focus on the impacts of AI on economic outcomes using large-scale field experiments with many companies.
Please share widely: apply.interfolio.com/194121
Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
If it takes 3 min extra to go through the non TSA pre line, this is a “market” in equilibrium!
Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
The MSU Department of Economics is proud to announce our 2026-2027 Job Market Candidates: spr.ly/6184BGQZPj
ALT Grid of 13 professional headshots of diverse 2026-2027 Job Market Candidates from Michigan State University's Department of Economics. Each photo has a name below it. One spot features the MSU Spartan logo with Yi Wang's name. Blurred green background.
Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
@WFUEconomics is hiring for two tenure-track positions in Economics this year. Here is the JOE ad for the Financial Economics position:
lnkd.in/eMqyTMyM
Claude/ codex — oh btw, don’t forget to add some broken English.
Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
When I stilled worked on biosecurity, I first learned about Debug, a Google project to reduce mosquito populations.
Results from their Singapore pilot are now out.
They crushed mosquito populations, reducing dengue infections by 70% in the process:
There is no good reason for mosquitoes to exist in wealthy countries today.
New technologies can get rid of the mosquito species that cause diseases like dengue, yellow fever, and malaria; and others can prevent them from carrying those diseases.
worksinprogress.co/issue/mos…
So why do mosquitoes still exist?
In a new article for Works in Progress, Maya Rosen explains how state incapacity and risk aversion led to over a decade of delays and billions of unnecessary bites in the United States.
Oxitec, for example, engineered an Aedes aegypti mosquito in such a way that its female offspring would die before adulthood. Through sustained releases, they showed they could reduce local mosquito populations by 80% or more, in field trials.
They sought approval from the USDA in 2010, which then passed it to the FDA, which passed it to the EPA. In 2020, the EPA allowed them to conduct limited field trials in the Florida Keys. Two years ago, their experimental permit expired, and they still need another review before it can be used routinely. Their proposed field trial in California was withdrawn after public opposition.
Another company, MosquitoMate, developed a technique involving Wolbachia, which also suppresses local mosquitoes. They then spent over fifteen years working through the system before finally receiving commercial registration nationwide in 2024.
It seems that, sometimes, the barrier to getting rid of diseases isn’t technology at all. It’s policy and political will.
New products shouldn’t get stuck in regulatory review for so long, especially if the delays are about basic questions like which agency has oversight over the product, rather than testing for safety.
Though some of those uncertainties were being addressed, the broader changes haven’t materialized. After Biden’s 2022 executive order, the agencies planned to update how their coordinated framework was implemented. But Trump rescinded the order last year.
Meanwhile, the EPA unit that reviews new mosquito control products is still a small office backlogged in reviewing a wide range of products.
Mosquitoes are a policy choice. We can get rid of them. Will we choose to?
worksinprogress.co/issue/mos…
Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
Impressive. This set of talks, along with the new America dot gov website, has the unmistakable feel of an Apple launch event. They're rebooting the federal government as a tech startup. Several observations.
(1) First, with this new AI interface to the entire federal government, if it works as promised, there won't be a single American who can't say their life wasn't helped at least in part by AI, or that the benefits accrued solely to zillionaires. This in itself cannily mitigates anti-datacenter sentiment.
(2) Second, Joe Gebbia and Marco Rubio's talks on simplifying name changes and passport filings introduce a completely new era where the US government is actually launching tangible features that benefit users.
(3) Third, this launch event in and of itself may visibly drive reform. It could become much more important than the State of the Union. Unlike laws, code is user-visible, and can be instantly audited by the public, as Obama found out with the failed obamacare website launch. So: the annual America dot gov event may be substance, whereas SOTU is traditionally optics. I wouldn't be surprised to see the President present at the next one.
(4) Fourth, this kind of event is a perfect example of where tech and red cooperate best. They both hate bureaucracy. Automating paperwork with code reduces the power of statists over both capitalists and nationalists. It's also hard to undo by other admins: once you digitize a process, hard to turn it back to paper.
(5) Fifth, it's an obvious point perhaps, but think about how much influence YCombinator has had in 20 years. From Gebbia's Airbnb joining their 2009 batch to a complete overhaul of the user interface of the US bureaucracy, and thus the US government.
(6) Sixth, this is another take on the network state. The functional part of the US (the network, meaning tech) is merging with and partially reforming the dysfunctional part (the state, meaning bureaucracy) by automating 20th century paper forms.
As a tech startup, there will no doubt be bugs and user issues and so on, but unlike with paper laws those issues will be visible and the code fixes will be verifiable. A new era of AI America. Rooting for them.
Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
We are hiring 2 tenure-track applied micro AP roles
@Miami_Econ!
One in health
One more general applied micro
Come join a dynamic department in a beautiful college town, less than an hour from Cincinnati.
Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
Hi Friends,
Thanks for all the support for the Everywhere Millionaire. Based on bookscan sales data, it looks like we are right on the bubble of the best seller list in business for September, so if you could pick up a copy at a local bookstore *in the next few days*, suggest the book to friends, retweet this message, or post about it - we’d greatly appreciate it!
bookshop.org/p/books/the-eve…
Would be funnier if they had Banerjee or Duflo listed as at Rajasthan Police :)
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Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
Exciting new project for housing policy wonks & data scientists! Want to create a tool to help state policymakers develop rough estimates of how much housing could be unlocked with different policy reforms? Sure you do! housingchallenge.turnout.roc…
Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
Students sometimes tell me they’re applying to PhD programs as a backup in case they don’t get a job as a software engineer or whatever. I get that the job market is rough but this is like saying you’ll start a company if you don’t find a job. Like starting a company, a PhD is the far *more* risky path and requires incredible grit over a long period. It isn’t just that you might realize after a couple of years that a PhD isn’t for you. The bigger risk is that you complete a PhD but end up overqualified on a niche topic after having spent 5-7 years on it. The research world, like acting, sports, music, or book publishing, is set up as a tournament, with lots of extremely competent people competing for a small number of highly desirable slots. We can talk about whether that’s fair and whether it’s inherent or can be changed, but as a professor I feel the least I can do is loudly and repeatedly warn people about what they’re getting into.
Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
"Governing in econometrics" has been turning out pretty well: teapaw.org/evavivalt/status/19170…
Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
A public-use version of the Open Research Unconditional income Study (ORUS) dataset is now posted! This RCT paid $1000/month to a treatment group for 3 years. Test your favorite hypotheses about the effects of guaranteed income!
data.openresearchlab.org/
Prabhat Barnwal retweeted
MSU Econ invites applications for an Assistant Professor in microeconomic theory. We are especially interested in candidates doing work in information economics but are open to excellent candidates in all subfields of microeconomic theory.
aeaweb.org/joe/listing.php?J…
