Chris Heitzig

     PhD Candidate in Economics Institute of Development Studies

    Research interests: inequality, health economics, labor, computational methods

I am a final-year economics PhD student at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). My research focuses on inequality, health economics, and labor. I also explore how computational methods can be used to answer questions in these sub-fields. Before starting my PhD at IDS, I spent more than three years at the Brookings Institution, where I managed a $1.5 million grant funding research into youth employment and structural transformation in Africa. I also spent two years at the World Bank, where I implemented social protection programs and designed impact evaluations to measure their effects. I have lived and worked on four continents, and have consulted for the United Nations, the FCDO, Stanford University, Dartmouth College, the International Finance Corporation, Oxfam, ActionAid, and MarketShare Associates. I hold an MPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford and a BA in Economics from Saint John’s University. My PhD is supervised by Amrita Saha, Jing Gu, and Sambit Bhattacharyya.

Featured research (* = Job Market Paper): 


*1. “Labour Market Effects of India’s Termination from the United States’ GSP.” 2025. Joint with Amrita Saha. IDS Working Paper 615,   Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, https://doi.org/10.19088/IDS.2025.008. Featured in the Financial Times and Sky News

2. Spillover Effects and Diffusion of Savings Groups.” 2024. Joint with Rossa O’Keeffe-O’Donovan. World Development. 173, 106377.

3. New Pathways to Job Creation and Transformation in Africa: The Promise of Industries without Smokestacks.” Joint with Haroon Bhorat, Brahima Coulibaly, Richard Newfarmer, and John Page. 2024. Rowman & Littlefield. [order here]

4. “TV, TEDx, and Tweets: Measuring the Impacts of a Multi-pronged Edutainment Program in Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan.” 2025. Ben Fowler, Marrium Khan, Renuka Pai, and Sakshi Varma. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 11088.


Contact:

Personal email: chris@heitzig.org

Phone number (WhatsApp): +1 763 772 6608

Twitter: @ChrisHeitzig

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