Aashish Mehta

Aashish Mehta is a development economist whose recent research is focused on structural transformation, education and wage inequality.  His recent papers use labor force and census data to examine why wage differences between workers with different educational backgrounds grew in many developing countries as they liberalized their economies.  He has published papers and book chapters on labor markets in India, Indonesia, Mexico, The Philippines and Thailand, and is currently working on a project pooling employment and trade data from several Asian economies to examine the linkages between education and export diversification.  Prior to joining UC-Santa Barbara, he served at the Asian Development Bank, providing analytical support for work on electricity sector reforms and corruption, and writing about macroeconomic developments in the region.  He is also a Senior Collaborator at the NSF funded Center for Nanotechnology in Society.