AASHISH MEHTA is Assistant Professor of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  He is an empirical development economist with a variety of interests.  He has published work on the economics of education, electricity sector reforms, commodity price dynamics, discrimination, and employment structure in developing economies.  He also has work forthcoming on the coffee crisis.

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

Currently, he is working on papers examining the relationships between education and employment in India, the Philippines and Thailand.  He is particularly interested in understanding how labor markets evolve as the structure of production changes and workforces become more educated.  He plans further empirical work on the linkages between structural change and income distribution, commodity prices, and on energy sector development and management.  He is also interested in the political economy of international aid and the constraints that information asymmetries impose on the types of work aid agencies can effectively undertake.