Meet Deepak Kumar, job market candidate
We are pleased to spotlight Deepak Kumar, a Ph.D. job market candidate in environmental and development economics.
His research examines how climate-related shocks and policy design affect economic outcomes in vulnerable communities, with a focus on improving how these impacts are measured and understood. Through rigorous empirical work, he studies both the local effects of weather events and the broader dynamics of displacement and aid to inform more effective, evidence-based policy in low-income settings.
- Job market paper: Weaker Typhoons, Not Weak Effects: Local Economic Impacts of Low-Intensity Storms
- Professional webpage and CV
- Dissertation chair: Anubhab Gupta
- Email Deepak
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"Deepak has an exceptional ability to identify important research questions and pursue them with careful analysis and intellectual curiosity. He brings a thoughtful, collaborative approach to his work and has developed into an independent researcher whose contributions will have lasting value in the field." Anubhab Gupta, Assistant Professor
Q&A with Deepak
What real-world problem are you most passionate about solving through your research, and why?
In my research, I am most passionate about answering questions that affect large populations and carry strong policy implications.
My job market paper is one example. It provides the first evidence on the economic cost of low-intensity storms in Vietnam, the frequent storms that rarely make it into official disaster records. Using local electricity records, I show these storms cause sharp and lasting drops in economic activity that standard satellite measures miss, and that the losses fall hardest on rural communities. Although I study Vietnam, the lessons apply to many low-income countries exposed to similar shocks.
My second line of work studies forcibly displaced populations in East Africa, across Kenya, Uganda, and Somalia, examining how the design of aid, camp policy, and interaction between host and displaced population shapes the local economy. This question matters now more than ever. Climate change and geopolitical conflict have pushed the number of forcibly displaced people to record highs, so large that, if they formed a single country, it would rank as the twelfth most populous in the world.
What draws me to these questions is scale and consequence. They affect millions of vulnerable people, and the answers can directly inform the policies meant to protect them. Looking ahead, I want to continue working at the intersection of environmental and development economics, studying the economic impact of environmental shocks and policies. Throughout this work, I aim to provide evidence that is data-driven and econometrically rigorous.
What inspired you to pursue your Ph.D.?
Before my Ph.D., I spent more than three years at the Verghese Kurien Policy Lab at IRMA in India, working with rural cooperatives, running surveys, and conducting field experiments across the country. That experience taught me to think like an economist, and it showed me how much good evidence can shape real policy. I wanted to know not just what was happening, but why, and when a program truly causes the changes we observed. I pursued a Ph.D. to learn to design my own research questions and to build the rigorous, data-driven tools needed to answer them credibly.
Posted July 6, 2026