Eeshani Kandpal

Our new working paper with Rossella Calvi and Hira Farooqi. We try to understand parental beliefs and preferences around marriage market returns to girls’ education in Pakistan. (Longer thread to come soon.) For now, read our blog and the paper itself here 👇🏾 www.cgdev.org/blog/how-do-...

I guess this counts as a sort of prebuttal to Lant Pritchett's piece in In Development. www.cgdev.org/publication/... (Lant's piece indevelopmentmag.com/the-death-of...)

The costs of violence against women begin long before violence occurs. In #India, fear of harassment can shape where women study, how they travel, and whether and where they work. @eeshani.bsky.social examines the evidence and what could help. https://go.cgdev.org/47DvaFD

From our AEA cttee on the job market, here's the first update on the status of the job mkt for PhD economists of the 2026-27 cycle. A thread with graphs follows... #EconJobMarket #EconSky @aeainformation.bsky.social @aeacswep.bsky.social @joelistings.bsky.social 1/9

As funding for gender equality shrinks, where should limited resources go? Kelsey Harris and @eeshani.bsky.social make the case for investing in the systems and structures that help other interventions work better and enable lasting change. https://go.cgdev.org/4wPFO6c

Report in the UK Independent citing UNHCR suggests that data covering more than three million refugee women across 20 nations suggests infant mortality (first year) rose from 8.3 to 17.5 per 1,000 2025-6; and under-five mortality rose 50%.

Is just rebranding Business Schools, no?

Student protests over alleged corruption in India's medical entrance exam reflect deeper concerns about opportunity and accountability. @eeshani.bsky.social explores why the exams are one of India's few pathways to intergenerational mobility and why trust in that system matters. go.cgdev.org/4xaiAbU

Proud of the community taking shape at @ideadevecon.bsky.social — 3,700+ development economists from 134 countries in only 3 weeks! 🌍

The lack of diagnostics, vaccines and medicines for diseases that primarily affect low-income countries is basically a market failure Companies won't invest to develop new products, because there's no likely buyer for them Hence, Advance Market Commitments www.cgdev.org/publication/...

Welcome to IDEA!

What did we learn at CGD’s first annual Women in Leadership Conference? Women are entering IFIs in roughly equal numbers to men, but leadership gaps persist. @eeshani.bsky.social and Kelsey Harris examine the structural barriers shaping who reaches the top. go.cgdev.org/4ebjP2j

Can periods of rapid growth and poverty reduction make governance challenges easier to ignore? A new CGD blog explores how denying issues like corruption and elite capture can erode trust, weaken reform efforts, and contribute to political and economic instability. https://go.cgdev.org/3QcM0Gk

Excellent @cgdev.org conference today on one of my fave topics #genderequity at work! - @eeshani.bsky.social

NEW: Tiny footprints. A blue blanket. The autopsy reports of babies who died after not receiving a vitamin K shot at birth included heartbreaking details about how small the babies were — and what items they had with them when they died.

📣 Join us for the 1st Annual CGD Women in Leadership Conference! We'll convene experts to examine why promotion systems fail to deliver equitable leadership outcomes—and what that failure means. Register today! https://go.cgdev.org/4bBq3bL

Cholera deaths in Africa nearly doubled in 2025, reaching 7,500, up from about 3,800 in 2023 and 2024. Analysis by @eeshani.bsky.social, @charlesjkenny.bsky.social, Brian Webster, and @markusgold.bsky.social shows the disease became more deadly, with higher fatality rates. go.cgdev.org/49g4jk5

Blog with @eeshani.bsky.social @markusgold.bsky.social and Brian Webster Cholera Deaths Nearly Doubled in Africa in 2025. Cuts to Aid May Have Contributed. 7,500 reported cholera deaths in SS Africa in 2025, ~2x 2024/2023.

PEPFAR supports #HIV treatment for more than 20 million people worldwide. But new data shows testing fell from 21.9M to 17.2M, weakening the pipeline of new diagnoses and treatment. @eeshani.bsky.social and Brian Webster explain why “stable” numbers may be misleading. https://go.cgdev.org/3QGbStY

If you were horrified watching elected leaders run & scramble because of gun violence, just imagine how my daughter Jaime felt in school running from an active shooter before she was killed. Now, become a part of the solution & only vote for people determined to address gun violence in America.

www.cgdev.org/blog/pepfars...

Intriguing: On April 7th, the World Bank publishes a report on Nigeria’s economy. One of the recommendations: open petrol imports to bring prices down. That would be bad news for the profits of Nigeria’s largest refinery, owned by Aliko Dangote.

This week we featured research on teachers, fiscal tightening, shadow banks and more! Read a summary of this work here: https://voxdev.org/topic/week-development-economics-voxdev-10042026

Health taxes on sugar and ultra-processed foods are gaining traction worldwide. But in many low-income settings, diets are shaped less by price than by what’s available. @eeshani.bsky.social argues without access to nutritious food, taxes alone won’t fix malnutrition. https://go.cgdev.org/4tlZLQP

At a moment of rising global crises, the #WorldBank should be operating at full strength. @charlesjkenny.bsky.social and @eeshani.bsky.social argue an opaque reorganization is sidelining expertise and weakening its ability to respond. https://go.cgdev.org/4c08se1

Blog: The World Bank’s Self-Inflicted Crisis www.cgdev.org/blog/world-b...

New blog with Eeshani Kandpal: The World Bank’s Self-Inflicted Crisis. The World Bank is undertaking some extremely odd internal reforms: ▪️ A centralization of expertise that appears to replicate Jim Kim’s “One World Bank Group” model that was widely considered a failure ...

Making a good case for "humanitarian" targeted cash transfers given the war's effects on food prices: www.cgdev.org/blog/when-oi... @eeshani.bsky.social @leecrawfurd.bsky.social

The Iran war oil shock will hit the hungry hardest. The same food price increase can mean 3× larger income losses for the poorest households. @leecrawfurd.bsky.social and @eeshani.bsky.social on why cash should be part of the response. https://go.cgdev.org/47KhM36

The Iran War Oil Shock Will Hit the Hungry Hardest—Cash Should Be Part of the Response (new @cgdev.org blog with @eeshani.bsky.social) www.cgdev.org/blog/when-oi...

In this short essay in BMJ Global Health, we draw attention to how standardised “global”measurement approaches obscure diversity, marginalise locally relevant insights needed for effective interventions, and create fragile measurement monocultures. gh.bmj.com/content/11/3...

NEW: They Didn’t Want to Have C-Sections. A Judge Would Decide How They Gave Birth. Two Florida women had to attend virtual court hearings while in labor to argue for their right to choose their own medical care. By @amyyurkanin.bsky.social

This beautiful picture by @eeshani.bsky.social, which she shared on LinkedIn, is proof that the Edgeworth Box was heaven-sent. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

If the World Bank is serious about being a “knowledge bank,” Shanta Devarajan and @eeshani.bsky.social argue, it must cultivate not just the ability to produce evidence but a hunger for using it: https://go.cgdev.org/4u8auzD

Great news for the profession to have an amazing addition to the rank of full professor! So well deserved!

"From Childhood Abduction to Adulthood: Enduring Consequences for Women in Uganda" www.cgdev.org/publication/...

Deep breath. I'm honored and excited to join the faculty of America's oldest research university, Johns Hopkins. I'll start this summer as a full professor, one of the founding faculty at the brand-new School of Government and Policy. We're building something unique & important, even historic.

In this, @mrao.bsky.social and I look at the gender of senior economic leadership across Latin America and the Caribbean from 1960-2020: - an overwhelmingly male club (no women until ‘89, very few even since) - the women who break through are more likely to have a PhD than men Read 👇 for more.

We know lead poisoning impacts children's cognition, schooling, and more. But what about other core development priorities? @leecrawfurd.bsky.social and @eeshani.bsky.social take a look at the underobserved interaction between lead and child nutrition: https://go.cgdev.org/45DyaRV

Economic policy is framed as technocratic—but leaders are appointed through political processes. Analyzing data from 1961–2020, @mrao.bsky.social & @eeshani.bsky.social find a persistent gender gap among economic decision-makers in Latin America & the Caribbean: https://go.cgdev.org/4qbFQSL

The gender wage gap has widened for two consecutive years, the first time that's happened since data collection started in 1960 nwlc.org/resource/wag...

I'm surprised and depressed. "...time alone won’t close that gap—it will require intentional efforts to rethink how economic leadership is identified and appointed." www.cgdev.org/blog/where-a... @eeshani.bsky.social

NEW @cgdev.org BLOG with @eeshani.bsky.social - Is Lead Poisoning a Missing Link in the Fight Against Malnutrition? www.cgdev.org/blog/lead-po...

Forthcoming in the JEL: "Women's Power in the Household" by Seema Jayachandran and Alessandra Voena. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Great piece by my Cato colleague. “Since July, immigration agents have shot at least six people behind the wheel of a vehicle. The same playbook is used each time: the agent says they “feared for their life” as a vehicle was “weaponized” against them. Juries should decide, but we tie their hands.