معرفی
Gisella Kagy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Consumer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Human Ecology. Her research focuses on development economics, with emphases on gender dynamics in labor markets, microenterprise behavior, and the long-term impacts of early-life health shocks in low-income countries. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Colorado Boulder (2015) alongside MA and BS degrees in Economics and Applied Mathematics.
Key areas of research include gender disparities in informal labor market resilience, microentrepreneur bargaining dynamics, and the legacy effects of maternal-child health programs in Bangladesh. Kagy has conducted fieldwork in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Bangladesh, leveraging experimental methods and original data collection. Her work appears in top journals like the World Bank Economic Review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and American Economic Review: Insights.
- Recipient of awards including the Hewlett Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (2013–2015)
- Principal investigator on $3.3 million+ in grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, World Bank, and others
- Co-lead on Ethiopia’s Inclusive Labor Markets Study and Ghana’s Aburi Firm Study
Her teaching portfolio includes courses on development economics, microeconomic theory, and inequality/discrimination at both UW-Madison and Vassar College. Kagy actively contributes to academic networks like J-PAL and serves on editorial review boards for 15+ economics journals.
