As part of our interview series, we ask renowned experts in the field about the future of research in development economics, and for their advice for young researchers. For our next interview, we got the opportunity to talk to Julieta Caunedo.
Julieta Caunedo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Cornell University. She is also a research affiliate at CEPR; and invited researcher at J-PAL, Y-RISE, ATAI; and a theme leader for STEG. Her research interests include macroeconomics and development, with emphasis on the impact of technology for productivity and the labor market.
ETRM: What inspired you to pursue development economics after starting a career in macroeconomics?
JC: Back when I was an undergrad in Argentina, development economics (in my view) was all about economic growth. Throughout college, I did volunteer work on marginalized neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, and I spent time n rural schools during highschool. So I always wanted to work on issues related to that. I thought that such a work was ultimately about growth and economic development, not necessarily micro interventions in the particular environment. I went to do my Ph.D. after having worked in policy for a few years, and did my Ph.D. under the supervision of Rodolfo Manuelli, who had written a bunch about macro and particularly, economic growth. To me it was natural and organic that I was going to do macro. Later on, as an assistant professor already, I figured out that there was a revolution happening in the field of development economics. That microinterventions had taken over many of the questions that were of interest to me, but with a different approach. So I had to learn about it. And, you know, my papers were and are very macro in the way I ask and approach questions, but I think of them as an opportunity to open a dialogue. So being able to speak both languages is very, very useful, and I think will be very useful for the next generation of scholars. So it’s not that I switched from macro to development; I’ve been always interested in these questions and I have a tool set that is not be the norm for the average development economist. But, as I said, I think of it as an opportunity.
ETRM: As an applied economist, I have found macroeconomics sometimes intimidating. Do you have any advice on how to learn more about macroeconomics? Or, do you have a paper you would recommend as the first entry to the field?
JC: I will give more general advice. First, I think that applied economists tend to focus much more on the details than a macroeconomist do. But it is not that we don’t focus on the details because they are uninteresting. There are a lot of details that are important to answering our questions, and as the frontier of knowledge expands, we are able to incorporate those details in our models. But models are stylized by construction- you have to walk that line between building models that are relevant to the world, and not killing yourself with something that nobody can ever solve. I would say, don’t be scared. Realize that building models if often an exercise in distilling a handful of important details,.
Second, just go ahead and sit in a macro sequence; you’ll hopefully realize that we have a lot of useful tools to teach you. It is true that it can be intimidating, but that’s how we learn! We challenge ourselves, we need to step away from our comfort zone. And, not all macro is going to be relevant for an applied economist. For example, it is not clear that you need to learn time series analysis if you’re going to be doing micro interventions in education. But there is a whole branch of macro that is going to be very useful to think about these problems. And I think being a student, the best thing you can do is be open to new ideas, and sit in as many classes as you can because the cost of doing that later in your career increases dramatically. I wish I could sit in a class for a semester to learn about,… I don’t know, state of the art machine learning techniques. But I don’t have the time now, so I end up learning these concepts by myself. Students have the luxury to explore as much as possible, and should exploit it.
The final thing that I would say, particularly to those interested in macro and development, is that STEG has a whole series of online lectures that are free for everybody. There are lectures by leaders in the field talking about the key questions in macro development, the relevant papers to read, etc. So you have a roadmap to the literature. This is again a luxury. When I was a student, the whole field of macro development was a bit foreign to me. The handbook chapter on structural change was published in 2014, which is the year I graduated. So my first introduction to models of structural change was to read the published handbook chapter. Again, don’t be scared to read and challenge yourself! It’s always more fun if you can read together with one or two students so they you can discuss issues on a common ground.
ETRM: What is your opinion on scaling up of micro interventions, because once you scale interventions, you begin to think about spillovers, general equilibrium effects, and maybe even your conceptual models will have to change. But at the same time, once you begin to think macro, like you spoke about previously, you will maybe have to make some simplifications?
JC: Well, the problem is that there is no one-recipe-fits-all. I think it’s great that applied economists are starting to think about issues of scalability. I think the time where we can just focus on narrow effects and focus solely on identification has passed. I think we have learned things that are very, very useful. The literature has improved our understanding of what type of interventions work and what type don’t. But I think the question of what’ll happen when you scale these interventions up is not very well understood, in part because there is probably not single answer across interventions. There is a bit of a philosophical question at the moment related to how we learn about programs at scale. Do we need to necessarily scale up the project to be able to identify these effects? If you think that scalability is an issue, should you just get rid of the “lab” approach? Or should we build models that are rich enough to accommodate the micro heterogeneity and think about the effects at scale through the lens of the model? I think a combination between evidence from the field and structural models that allow us to simulate effects at scale is the path forward.
You very rarely have the ability to literally run an intervention for a country as a whole. And even if you do, I think the question is, okay, this works in, say Bangladesh, is it going to work in India? Is it going to work in Argentina? I don’t know. Are we going to keep running programs at scale country by country? No, clearly not, I think these are issues of external validity that the experimental literature has been dwelling with for a while now.
ETRM: How did you navigate the challenges of being a woman in a typically male dominated field?
JC: Let’s put it this way. When I graduated, I thought it was a non-issue and I operated accordingly. In part because that was my mechanism of survival: this is a non-issue, just push harder. I think with time, things have changed, we are much more aware that issues are real, and people are much more openly talking about them. And I think the real question for minorities in any profession is, how do we make the working environment amenable for the average person in such a minority? Because, you know, there were always excellent women pushing through, and at the same time I think we can all tell stories about non friendly attitudes towards women or other minorities. So the real question we need to ask is, how do we make it so that the average person in such a minority feels welcome into the field? In economics, I have the impression that the labor market rewards being outgoing, being a good presenter, being able to approach people when you are in a networking event, and the reality is that not everybody feels comfortable doing that, irrespective of gender. I think the one issue is that some of those traits may be correlated with gender. I think there are traits that are rewarded for both males and females the same way, and some are not. Indeed, there are plenty of studies documenting biases in attitudes of colleagues and students towards their female peers. The worry really is that we’re missing out on good talent because we are selecting on traits that are just more or less prevalent across demographic groups.
More importantly, I think the biggest hurdle for a female is the choice about childbearing on a tenure track, where time is extremely limited. And, you know, childbearing, particularly in the first couple of years is very time-consuming for the mother, no matter what arrangement you have at home. I’ve seen some improvement in acknowledging that this is an issue. And at least at Cornell, people have been very welcoming of these concerns and there has been a push within the administration to try to accommodate it. The solutions are never perfect, and I think as women start to close the gap in representation among tenured faculty, we will start to see real change.
ETRM: Do you have any general advice for students who are starting their research career?
JC: Read, read, read, and travel if you can. I put a lot of value on creativity. And that’s something that doesn’t come up sitting in your office. You need good training, that’s on us teachers to help you with, but creativity is really tough to “teach”. I would use the first couple of years of the Ph.D. to tool up. Try to have tools to that are able to read and understand research across fields. Doing that is going to make you a better colleague because you’re going to be able to talk about others work in a knowledgeable way, as well as will bring up new ideas. I would also say, that the Ph.D. and the profession are in many ways, a career against your own mind. So don’t isolate yourself, try to exercise, if it is in teams, better. Socialize with your peers, meet friends. You know, we spend a lot of time alone because of the nature of what we do. But I think being surrounded by good colleagues, good friends can make the experience so much more rewarding. I would say the most rewarding part of this job is literally the friendships that I have made, and collaborating with people that are as motivated about a problem as you are.
ETRM: Thank you. That was so helpful!
