Katrina Kosec

Katrina Kosec is a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, where she teaches Global Political Economy. She is also a senior research fellow in the Development Strategy and Governance Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) where she is Theme Leader for Public Investment and leads a research program on gender, agriculture, and rural transformation.

Katrina received her PhD in Political Economics and her MA in Economics from Stanford University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in Economics. She also holds a BSc in International Political Economy from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Her research focuses on the linkages between governance, gender, and poverty. One strand of work investigates the impacts of government policies and public sector incentives on poverty, 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 public sector policies, private sector practices, 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, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Papua New Guinea in collaboration with various international agencies including the World Bank, the IGC, GIZ, 3ie, WVI, and USAID, as well as with government and local NGO partners.

At IFPRI, Katrina serves as editor of the EnGendering Data Blog and co-organizes IFPRI’s Applied Microeconomics and Development (AMD) seminar. She is also 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).

Her work has been published in journals including the American Political Science Review, 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.