PEDL Early-Career Researchers Workshop - Conference on Firms, Trade, and Development 2025

We are pleased to announce that PEDL will hold a one-day workshop for early-career researchers on October 23, 2025, as part of the "Firms, Trade, and Development" conference hosted by the IGC and the Yale Economic Growth Center (EGC) on October 24 and 25. Both events will take place in person, at Yale University in New Haven, CT, USA.

The workshop is open to junior researchers who have already obtained their PhD and do not yet have tenure (or are within 8 years of their PhD, if not in a tenure-track position). The theme is the same as the "Firm, Trade, and Development" conference, and participants in the workshop will also be invited to attend the main conference.

Programme

8:30 - 9:00 am: Coffee and welcome remarks

9:00 - 9:45 am: The Origins of Structural Transformation

• Mayara Felix (Yale University)

9:45 - 10:30 am: Farm to Firm: Clustering and Returns to Scale in Agricultural Supply Chains

• Jay Sayre (UC Davis)

10:30 - 11:00 am: Break

11:00 - 11:30 am: Internet as a General-Purpose Technology: Evidence from Colombian Firms

• Gaurav Chiplunkar (University of Virginia)

11:30 - 11:50 am: From Margins to Mainstream? Gender Discrimination in Digital Marketplaces

• Sher Afghan (LUMS)

11:50 am - 12:20 pm: Beyond Beneficial Information: The Impact of Additional Consulting on Digital Record Adoption and Profit Measurement

• Abiola Oyebanjo (Innovations for Poverty Action)

12:20 - 12:40 pm: The Impact of VAT Administration on Firm Growth

• Tejaswi Velayudhan (UC Irvine)

12:40 - 1:40 pm: Lunch

1:40 - 2:25 pm: Investment along the supply chain: removing barriers to growth for firms in India

• Chhavi Rastogi (International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group)

2:25 - 3:10 pm: Value Creation & Value Capture in Indian Garment Sector Bargaining

• Russell Morton (University of Rochester)

3:10 - 3:40 pm: Break

3:40 - 4:10 pm: Towards win-win: Evidence from commercial dispute resolution in India

• Manaswini Rao (University of Delaware)

4:10 - 4:30 pm: Discouraging Network-Based Hiring Without Compromising Productivity: Experimental Evidence from Low-Wage Workers in Pakistan

• Maryiam Haroon (University of Chicago)

4:30 - 5:00 pm: Drought and Firms: Impact on Food and Beverage Manufacturing Firms

• Solomon Zena Walelign (University of Gondar)

5:00 - 5:20 pm: Risk Sharing Within Firms: Evidence From Urban Labor Markets in Uganda

• Anna Vitali (New York University)

Please direct any queries regarding this call to [email protected].

Academic committee:

Jonas Hjort (UCL and CEPR)

Meredith Startz (Dartmouth)

Eric Verhoogen (Columbia and CEPR)

Chris Woodruff (Oxford and CEPR)