Anjali Pai

Anjali Pai

PhD Candidate in Economics

University of California, San Diego

Biography

I am a doctoral candidate in Economics at the University of California San Diego with an interest in policies that improve outcomes for disadvantaged or underrepresented populations. My current work has two strands: (1) evaluating school-based policies that address adolescent mental health; and (2) identifying and addressing the barriers faced by women and underrepresented minority students in STEM and other high-return fields.

I will be a Senior Analyst in Economic and Social Policy at Abt Global starting in August 2024.

Interests

  • Education & Health Policy
  • Labor Economics/Applied Microeconomics
  • Behavioral Economics of Education

Education

  • PhD in Economics, 2024 (Expected)

    University of California, San Diego

  • MS in Economics, 2020

    University of California, San Diego

  • BA in Economics, 2019

    Williams College

  • BA in Computer Science, 2019

    Williams College

Job Market Paper

October 2023

The Effect of School-Based Health Care on Adolescent Behavior and Mental Health

This paper looks at the effect of access to a School-Based Health Center on suspensions and dropouts, two metrics that may be strong proxies for adolescent mental health status. Using a difference-in-differences model with a propensity-score matched sample of control schools, I find that in California, access to a school-based health center decreases school-level suspension rates by around 1.4 percentage points within 3 years of the opening.
PDF

Working Papers

September 2023

What You Don't Know Might Deter You: The Effect of Information Provision on Minority Retention in Undergraduate Economics

Through an RCT at a large research university, I find that providing undergraduate students in an introductory Economics course with information about potential careers, income, research topics, and diversity in the field of Economics increases the likelihood of enrolling in a subsequent Economics course for underrepresented minority students by around 12.3 percentage points and that the information induces primarily lower-performing students to enroll.
PDF

Teaching

Data Analytics for Social Sciences

TA: Winter 2021, Spring 2021, Winter 2022, Spring 2022, Spring 2023

Public Policy

TA: Fall 2021, 2022

Economics of Discrimination

TA: Winter 2023

Economics of Education

TA: Fall 2020

Teaching Statement

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