BIO

Aashish Mehta is Assistant Professor of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  He is a development economist and has published work on the economics of education, income inequality, electricity sector reforms and regulation, price transmission, the coffee crisis, discrimination, and the evolving composition of employment in developing economies.

Before joining UCSB, he served as an economist at the Asian Development Bank, where he initially provided analytical support for work on electricity sector reforms in several Central Asian Republics and later the Philippines.  He also served in the Bank’s research department, writing about macroeconomic developments in Asia – especially in India.

Currently, he is working on papers examining why developing economies’ wage distributions have tended to fracture when they were liberalized; on the types of jobs that are growing and shrinking in the developing world; and on the problems faced by organizations that distribute subsidized food through subsidiaries whose actions cannot be controlled.

ACADEMIC VITA

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Ph.D., Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2004
M.Sc., Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2000
B.A., Economics, Oberlin College, 1997

COURSES TAUGHT

Global 2: Introduction to Global Socioeconomics Processes [syllabus – Winter 2010]
Global 130: Global Economy and Development [syllabus –Fall 2011]
Global 234: Globalization and Markets (a.k.a. Microeconomics for Global Studies [syllabus – Winter 2010]

WORKING PAPERS

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•  Subsidized food Distribution with Endogenous Quality (with Shikha Jha)

•  Pilferage from Opaque Food Subsidy Programs: Measurement and Policy Implications (with Shikha Jha)

•  Overeducation in Developing Economies: How can we test for it, and what does it mean? (with Jesus Felipe, Pilipinas Quising and Shiela Camingue)

•  Incomplete Property Rights, Exposure to Markets, and the Provision of Ecosystem Services in China (with Michael T. Bennett and Jintao Xu)

•  Rising College Premiums in Mexico: How Important is Trade? (with Belinda Acuña-Mohr)

•  Where have all the educated workers gone?  Education and Structural Transformation in Three Asian Economies (with Jesus Felipe, Pilipinas Quising and Shiela Camingue)