203.432.5787

Associate Professor of Economics

Mushfiq Mobarak is an associate professor of economics at the Yale School of Management. He is a development economist with interests in environmental issues.

Professor Mobarak has several ongoing research projects in Bangladesh, India, Malawi and Brazil. He conducts field experiments exploring ways to induce people in developing countries to adopt technologies or behaviors that are likely to be welfare improving.

Professor Mobarak co-chairs the Urban Services Initiative at the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, and leads the Bangladesh Research Program for the ‘International Growth Centre (IGC)’ at LSE and Oxford. He has previously worked as an economist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the World Bank, and at the International Monetary Fund.

Professor Mobarak advises several PhD economics candidates working on development issues, and he won the 2006 Most Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award at the University of Colorado. He teaches MBA courses focused on the challenges to doing for-profit or non-profit business in developing countries and on marketing products and behaviors to poor consumers. He also leads Yale SOM ‘international experience’ trips to developing countries.

Selected Publications
"Development Effects of Electricity:  Evidence fro the Topographic Placement of Hydropower Plants in Brazil" (with M. Lipscomb and T. Barham), American Economic Journal:  Applied Economics, forthcoming

"The Low Demand for New Cookstove Technologies" (with P. Dwivedi, R. Bailis and G. Miller), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 109, No. 27, 10815-10820, 2012

"Skilled Immigration and Innovation: Evidence from Enrollment Fluctuations in U.S. Doctoral Programs” (with E. Stuen and K. Maskus), The Economic Journal, 2012

"The Transforming Power of Democracy: Regime Type and the Distribution of Electricity" (with D. Brown), American Political Science Review, May, 2009

"The Impact of Urban Spatial Structure on Travel Demand in the United States" (with A. Bento, M. Cropper, and K. Vinha), Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 87, No. 3, August, 2005

"Democracy, Volatility and Development," The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 87, No. 2, May, 2005

Working Papers
"Seasonal Migration and Risk Aversion" (with G. Bryan and S. Chowdhury)

"Selling Formal Insurance to the Informally Insured" (with M. Rosenzweig)

"Marriage Market Effects of a Wealth Shock in Bangladesh" (with R. Kuhn and C. Peters)

"The Costs of Decentralization: Water Pollution Spillovers from the Re-drawing of County Boundaries in Brazil" (with M. Lipscomb)

Education
PhD University of Maryland at College Park, 2002
MA University of Maryland at College Park, 1999
BA Macalester College, 1997