Hongdi Zhao

Room 438, Warren Hall

Cornell University

Ithaca, NY 14853

Hi! I am a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, with a minor in Data Science. My research interests lie in the fields of applied microeconomics with a focus on economic development and human well-being. I am interested in using Machine Learning as a tool to study economic development.

I am currently the Editor-in-Chief for “Economics That Really Matters”, a blog hosted by the Collaboration for International Development Economics Research (CIDER) at Cornell University. If you are interested in posting your research on our blog, please contact me at hz399@cornell.edu.

selected publications

Aspirations
Aspirations and women’s empowerment: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan

Katrina Kosec, Kamiljon Akramov, Bakhrom Mirkasimov, and 2 more authors

Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, 2022

Abs Bib HTML PDF Code

There is an enormous interest in development interventions aimed at reducing behavioural poverty traps, including by raising women’s and girls’ aspirations, or future-oriented goals. However, little is known about how women’s aspirations influence their gender attitudes, the marriages into which they select and their involvement in intra-household decision-making. We find that women in Kyrgyzstan with higher aspirations are more likely to espouse egalitarian gender attitudes, as are their husbands, and their husbands have higher aspirations. They also live in households in which women play a greater role in decision-making, and in which spouses are more likely to agree about women’s roles in decision-making.
@article{kosec2022aspirations, title = {Aspirations and women's empowerment: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan}, author = {Kosec, Katrina and Akramov, Kamiljon and Mirkasimov, Bakhrom and Song, Jie and Zhao, Hongdi}, journal = {Economics of Transition and Institutional Change}, volume = {30}, number = {1}, pages = {101--134}, year = {2022}, publisher = {Wiley Online Library}, doi = {10.1111/ecot.12302}, }