Seema Jayachandran

Seema Jayachandran is an economist who currently works as Professor of Economics at Princeton University. Her research interests include development economics, health economics, and labor economics.

Seema Jayachandran
Alma mater	Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Oxford, Harvard University
Awards	Sloan Research Fellowship, 2011; NSF CAREER Award, 2011
Scientific career
Fields	Economics
Institutions	University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, Northwestern University, Princeton University
Doctoral advisor	Michael Kremer
Website	www.seemajayachandran.com

Biography

Seema Jayachandran earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993. As a Marshall Scholar, she studied Physics and Philosophy at the University of Oxford. In 1997, she began graduate studies in Physics at Harvard University,^[1] but completed a PhD in Economics in 2004.

After her graduation and a term as post-doctoral fellow as RWJ Scholar in Health Policy at The University of California at Berkeley, she became an assistant professor of economics at Stanford University (2006–11). In 2011, Jayachandran moved to Northwestern University as Associate Professor of Economics before becoming a full professor in 2018. In 2022, she moved to Princeton University.^[2] In parallel, she has held visiting appointments at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also maintains affiliations as a Research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), as a fellow of the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) as well as with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Moreover, she performs editorial duties for the academic journals American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, and Science. Finally, she has worked as a consultant for United Nations Development Program and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.^[3]

In addition to her research, she has written for The New York Times,^[4] appeared on Science Friday,^[5] and done a "Science Ask Me Anything" on Reddit.^[6]

Research

Seema Jayachandran's research focuses on health, development economics, and environmental economics.^[7] Her research has been acknowledged through several awards, including a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2011,^[8] an NSF CAREER Award in 2011,^[9] and the Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America in 2018.^[10]

Much of Jayachandran's work is in development economics, including maternal and child health in Africa and South Asia.^[11] A substantial body of her research concerns gender differences.^[1] In India, she finds that there is a tension between the desire for smaller families and the desire to have at least one son, making son preference stronger as family sizes shrink.^[12] She estimates that fertility decline can explain one-third to one-half of the increase in the number of "missing women" in India.^[13] In work with Erica Field and Rohini Pande, she also finds evidence that patriarchic gender norms in India constrain female entrepreneurship, with Muslim women (the sociocultural group with the most restrictions) being unable to benefit from business training.^[14]

Another important focus of Jayachandran's research revolves around deforestation in Indonesia and Uganda. In a 2008 publication, she showed that massive forest fires in Indonesia caused air pollution that had adverse impacts on pregnant women and babies in poor communities, leading to more than 15,000 fetal and infant deaths.^[15] In 2017, with a group of collaborators, she published research in Science showing that landowners in Uganda would preserve forests if they were paid to preserve forest cover.^[1] She found that landowners who were offered a conservation contract only cleared 4% of land as opposed to the 9% cleared in villages without a contract.^[16] This delayed 3000 metric tons of carbon dioxide at a cost of 46 cents per ton.^[16] These results were covered in the New York Times.^[17]

However, her most cited article^[18] is about the impact that the departure of US Senator Jim Jeffords from the Republican to the Democratic Parties in 2001 had on the valuation of companies that had previously donated large sums of money to Republican Senators.^[19] This was the first economics paper she wrote.^[20]

Selected works

• Jayachandran, Seema (October 1, 2006). "The Jeffords effect". Journal of Law and Economics. 49 (2): 397–425. doi:10.1086/501091. ISSN 0022-2186. S2CID 233649.
• Jayachandran, Seema. "Selling labor low: Wage responses to productivity shocks in developing countries." Journal of political Economy 114, no. 3 (2006): 538-575.
• Jayachandran, Seema, and Adriana Lleras-Muney. "Life expectancy and human capital investments: Evidence from maternal mortality declines." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 124, no. 1 (2009): 349-397.
• Jayachandran, Seema (October 2, 2009). "Air Quality and Early-Life Mortality Evidence from Indonesia's Wildfires". Journal of Human Resources. 44 (4): 916–954. doi:10.3368/jhr.44.4.916. ISSN 0022-166X. S2CID 15390085.
• Jayachandran, Seema, and Ilyana Kuziemko. "Why do mothers breastfeed girls less than boys? Evidence and implications for child health in India." The Quarterly journal of economics 126, no. 3 (2011): 1485-1538.
• Field, Erica, Seema Jayachandran, and Rohini Pande. "Do traditional institutions constrain female entrepreneurship? A field experiment on business training in India." American Economic Review 100, no. 2 (2010): 125-29.
• Jayachandran, Seema, and Michael Kremer. "Odious debt." American Economic Review 96, no. 1 (2006): 82-92.
• Jayachandran, Seema, Joost De Laat, Eric F. Lambin, Charlotte Y. Stanton, Robin Audy, and Nancy E. Thomas. "Cash for carbon: A randomized trial of payments for ecosystem services to reduce deforestation." Science 357, no. 6348 (2017): 267-273.

References

1. "Faculty Spotlight: Seema Jayachandran: Institute for Policy Research - Northwestern University". www.ipr.northwestern.edu. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
2. "Board approves 15 faculty appointments". Princeton University. Retrieved July 12, 2022.
3. Curriculum vitae of Seema Jayachandran from her personal webpage. Retrieved October 11th, 2018.
4. "Think Positive, Climb Out of Poverty? It Just Might Work". Retrieved October 11, 2018.
5. "Seema Jayachandran - Science Friday". Science Friday. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
6. "r/science - Science AMA: I'm Seema Jayachandran, economist at Northwestern University. Let me tell you why paying poor farmers to not cut down forests is a cheap way to combat climate change. AMA about why small amounts of money for Ugandan farmers helped preserve endangered chimp habitat, and the atmosphere". reddit. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
7. "Seema Jayachandran | The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab". www.povertyactionlab.org. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
8. "Scholars receive Sloan Fellowships". The Stanford Daily. February 16, 2011. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
9. "NSF Award Search: Award#1156941 - CAREER: Health, Environmental Issues, and Price Effects in Developing Countries". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
10. "Ecological Society of America announces 2018 award recipients | Ecological Society of America". www.esa.org. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
11. India, Ideas For. "Seema,Jayachandran". www.ideasforindia.in. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
12. Jayachandran, Seema. (2017). Fertility Decline and Missing Women. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 9(1), pp. 118-139.
13. "Seema Jayachandran". The Indian Express. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
14. Field, E., Jayachandran, S., Pande, R. (2010). Do traditional institutions constrain female entrepreneurship? A field experiment on business training in India. American Economic Review, 100(2), pp. 125–129.
15. Jayachandran, Seema (October 2, 2009). "Air Quality and Early-Life Mortality Evidence from Indonesia's Wildfires". Journal of Human Resources. 44 (4): 916–954. doi:10.3368/jhr.44.4.916. ISSN 0022-166X. S2CID 15390085.
16. "Testing the Effectiveness of Payments for Ecosystem Services to Enhance Conservation in Uganda". Innovations for Poverty Action. April 22, 2015. Retrieved December 10, 2020.
17. Plumer, Brad (July 20, 2017). "A Cheap Fix for Climate Change? Pay People Not to Chop Down Trees (Published 2017)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 10, 2020.
18. "Seema Jayachandran - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.com. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
19. Jayachandran, Seema (October 1, 2006). "The jeffords effect". Journal of Law and Economics. 49 (2): 397–425. doi:10.1086/501091. ISSN 0022-2186. S2CID 233649.
20. "Seema Jayachandran on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved October 11, 2018.