Gisella KagyAssistant Professor of Consumer Science | Global Human Ecology & 4W Faculty Fellowshe/her/hers

I am an applied microeconomist who studies empirical questions related to consumers, firms, human capital accumulation, and labor markets in low-income countries. I have a particular interest in studying how gender interacts with labor markets. My research also explores how early childhood and in-utero health shocks impact later life human capital accumulation. I have projects in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Ghana that use a variety of experimental and applied methods. Much of my work involves field experiments and original data collection.

Selected Publications

Hardy, M., Litzow, E., McCasland, J., & Kagy, G. (2023). Gender Differences in Informal Labor-Market Resilience. The World Bank Economic Review, 37(1), 112-126. https://doi.org/10.1093/wber/lhac028

Hardy, M., Kagy, G., & Song, L. (2022). Gotta Have Money to Make Money? Bargaining Behavior and Financial Need of Microentrepreneurs. American Economic Review: Insights, 4(1), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1257/aeri.20200723

Hardy, M., & Kagy, G. (2020). It’s Getting Crowded in Here: Experimental Evidence of Demand Constraints in the Gender Profit Gap. The Economic Journal, 130(631), 2272-2290. https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueaa040

Barham, T., Champion, B., Foster, A. D., Jamadani, J. D., Jochem, W. C., Kagy, G., Kuhn, R., Menken, J., Razzaque, A., Dowling Root, E., & Turner, P.S. (2021). Thirty-five years later: Long-term effects of the Matlab maternal and child health/family planning program on older women’s well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(28), e2101160118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101160118

For a full list of publications, see Kagy’s CV.

Featured Media

• VoxDev, How financial need affects pricing: Evidence from small businesses in Ghana