Today at Brown

Sriniketh Nagavarapu comes to Brown with a joint appointment in the Department of Economics and the Center for Environmental Studies (CES). His research is focused on the interaction between environmental issues — such as conservation and patterns of land use — and the labor market, particularly in developing countries. He is also interested in government transfer programs, such as welfare, food stamps, and social security, both in the United States and abroad.

The common thread? Investigating the consequences of economic policy.

“The prospect of merging economic theory with something immediately policy-relevant is very appealing to me,” he said. “By applying economic concepts to empirical work, we can actually figure out who is helped and who is hurt by specific government programs.”

After growing up in Torrance, Calif., Nagavarapu graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in economics in 2002. He will receive a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford this year. His dissertation examines ethanol production in Brazil and what expanding export opportunities would mean for the environment and regional development. His findings indicate that increased production of sugarcane, which is used to make ethanol, could actually expand wage inequality within any given region. Nagavarapu also found that expanded production could pose only a minimal threat of deforestation, since the largest increases in sugarcane cultivation are predicted to occur in Sao Paulo and the northeastern part of the country, away from the most environmentally sensitive areas.

As for his interest in government transfer programs, Nagavarapu’s current research looks at “disconnected youth” in the United States — that is, kids who fail to make smooth transitions from adolescence to adulthood. His work, along with Stanford colleagues, introduces concrete ways to define one’s disconnection from school, work, and family over a period of time and identifies which groups government services should target.

Nagavarapu was the recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, a Stanford Graduate Fellowship, a Taube/Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research Fellowship and has been honored with a Teaching Assistant Award at Stanford. His research presentations at the Stanford Center for International Development and the Pacific Development Conference have covered topics including food assistance policy in India, school enrollment during Argentina’s financial crisis, and the Brazilian agricultural labor market.