RUBéN IRVIN ROJAS VALDéS
Short bio
I am an Assistant Professor of economics at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE in Spanish) at Mexico City. I received my Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California at Davis. My primary fields of interest are development economics and applied econometrics.
I am also a Faculty Associate at Cornell University's DEEP-GREEN-RADAR and TREESPEAR research groups, where I held a Visiting Fellow appointment.
For my Ph.D. dissertation, I analyzed the dynamic and strategic migration, labor market participation, and schooling decisions of individuals and households in rural Mexico using reduced-form and structural econometric models.
Other research projects I have pursued include an evaluation of the effects of food aid for refugees in Rwanda, and an ongoing project that tests recent theory on the role of hope in development economics by inducing a treatment aimed to modify the aspirations and goals of a group of micro finance users in Oaxaca, Mexico.
I have written several peer-reviewed publications on important issues in development faced by developing countries, including a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in 2016, and a paper published in World Development in 2017.
I have won several awards for my research, including the UC-Davis Graduate Student Travel Award; a Gifford Center Travel Award; the Henry A. Jastro Graduate Research Award; the Blum Center for Developing Economics Poverty Alleviation through Sustainable Solutions (PASS) Project Grant; and a grant from the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS). I was selected for the 2017 Western Economic Association International Graduate Student Dissertation Workshop.
I have also presented my research at several conferences including the Latin American Meeting of the Econometric Society (LAMES); the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting; the Oxford Symposium on Population, Migration, and the Environment; the Pacific Conference for Development Economics; the Midwest International Economic Development Conference; the North East Universities Development Consortium Conference (NEUDC); and the CIRET International Conference on Migration and Welfare in Rome.”
I am also a Faculty Associate at Cornell University's DEEP-GREEN-RADAR and TREESPEAR research groups, where I held a Visiting Fellow appointment.
For my Ph.D. dissertation, I analyzed the dynamic and strategic migration, labor market participation, and schooling decisions of individuals and households in rural Mexico using reduced-form and structural econometric models.
Other research projects I have pursued include an evaluation of the effects of food aid for refugees in Rwanda, and an ongoing project that tests recent theory on the role of hope in development economics by inducing a treatment aimed to modify the aspirations and goals of a group of micro finance users in Oaxaca, Mexico.
I have written several peer-reviewed publications on important issues in development faced by developing countries, including a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in 2016, and a paper published in World Development in 2017.
I have won several awards for my research, including the UC-Davis Graduate Student Travel Award; a Gifford Center Travel Award; the Henry A. Jastro Graduate Research Award; the Blum Center for Developing Economics Poverty Alleviation through Sustainable Solutions (PASS) Project Grant; and a grant from the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS). I was selected for the 2017 Western Economic Association International Graduate Student Dissertation Workshop.
I have also presented my research at several conferences including the Latin American Meeting of the Econometric Society (LAMES); the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting; the Oxford Symposium on Population, Migration, and the Environment; the Pacific Conference for Development Economics; the Midwest International Economic Development Conference; the North East Universities Development Consortium Conference (NEUDC); and the CIRET International Conference on Migration and Welfare in Rome.”