Two postdoctoral positions in Economics of Child Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries Ref. I1RN002332 (GA Nº 101041741)

The research project “Leveraging early adolescence for development: longitudinal and experimental evidence from Ghana” (LEAD) funded by the European Research Council (ERC) is recruiting two postdoctoral researchers with a PhD in Economics under the supervision of Dr Elisabetta Aurino. Ideally, candidates should have a strong research interest and background in development economics (e.g. health, education, child development, and related topics), with a focus on child development, behavioural economics, and experimental methods. The project will be located at the School of Economics, Department of Economic History and Development, at the University of Barcelona (UB).

The position is offered for two years, and it can be extended further. The position can start at at the earliest convenience or in September 2023. This postdoc does not involve teaching and the salary conditions are competitive (36k gross per year). Successful applicants will join a team producing cutting-edge research on child development, regularly publishing their work in top international and multidisciplinary journals. Senior researchers from fields such as Developmental Psychology (Sharon Wolf, University of Pennsylvania, and Richard Appiah, University of Ghana) and Global Health (Seth Adu-Afarwuah, University of Ghana) are part of the research team.

Job description (tasks).

The candidates will work cooperatively with the PI and any other research member of the LEAD team to:

• Contribute to the development and piloting of a program to support parents of adolescents in LMICs
• Contribute to the development of survey instruments for child and parent surveys and support data collection processes
• Analyse data and write scientific and policy-focused publications
• Engage in all of the research project public and dissemination activities

Required qualifications

• PhD in Economics
• Specialisation in child development economics or related fields (family, education, health, or behavioral economics)
• Experience of working with large-scale data from low- and middle-income country settings
• Ability to manage multiple activities simultaneously, efficiently and on-time, and be able to meet deadlines.
• Proven ability to write autonomously high-quality research papers
• Excellent written and spoken language skills in English
• Excellent skills in Stata
• Proven ability to work in a multicultural and multidisciplinary environment

Desirable qualifications

• Experience conducting fieldwork for experiments, including lab-in-the-field, in LMICs
• Skills in structural analysis modeling
• Understanding of qualitative methods

Gross salary per year*

36k per year