Concentration: International Development Policy

Marcos A. Rangel is an applied microeconomist. His research focuses on the patterns of accumulation of human capital with particular attention to the intra-family decision process (parents and children), to the impact of policies to foment education and health, and to racial differentials. His research has contributed to a better understanding of how the negotiations between mother and fathers, and also how families insert themselves into societies, influence the allocation of resources towards investment in human capital of children.

Recent projects branched out in investigating the impact of prenatal care policies and maternal labor regulations over child outcomes, focusing on the innovative use of data to infer causal effects of policies. Current work takes advantage of a satellite pictures of areas in which agricultural activities rely on the use of fires to compute the impact of agricultural development, environmental regulation and business cycles over health outcomes of infants and mothers-to-be.

Rangel is a research affiliate with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), the Population Research Center at NORC/University of Chicago, and the Duke Population Research Institute (DuPRI). He is also an associate editor of The Journal of Development Economics. 

Sarah Bermeo is a political economist and associate professor of public policy and political science in the Sanford School at Duke University and Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) in the Master of International Development Policy (MIDP) program. Her research lies at the intersection of international relations and development, with a particular focus on relations between industrialized and developing countries. She has published multiple articles on foreign aid, with additional work examining trade agreements and migration. Her book, Targeted Development: Industrialized Country Strategy in a Globalizing World (Oxford, 2018) demonstrates that the desire to limit negative spillovers associated with underdevelopment leads industrialized states to allocate foreign aid, trade agreements, and climate finance across developing countries in a development-oriented, but also self-interested, manner. Her work has appeared in International Organization, Journal of Politics, and World Development. Her article, “Aid is Not Oil,” received the 2016 Robert O. Keohane Award from International Organization.