Amanda Clayton Walsh

Statement of Research Interests

 

My research interests lie in determining causal links between household demographics and disease burden in developing nations through rigorous interdisciplinary collaboration both in the field and in traditional academic settings. In conjunction with this work, I am interested in assessing the implementation of emerging technologies for disease prevention.

 

Throughout my graduate education, I have been particularly interested in the differential impacts of dengue epidemics on the labor outcomes of male and female residents in the Peruvian Amazon. I exploit fluctuations in the timing and scale of dengue epidemics, which are arguably exogenous to the household, to isolate changes in the work hours of all primary male and female residents in in the city of Iquitos, Peru from July 2005 to June 2010. I find that dengue epidemics are associated with large, statistically significant decreases in work hours for male and female residents who work positive hours. In aggregate, females reduce work hours more than males, both in levels of the point estimates and in percentage terms relative to mean hours. This research contributes to the existing infectious disease literature by assessing the potential labor supply and labor demand impacts of epidemics among all households in an affected region, and by differentially analyzing the labor market responses of men and women.

 

Much of my graduate career has been devoted to studying mosquito-borne disease and emerging mosquito control technologies from a uniquely interdisciplinary prospective. In 2012, I was selected to be a member of the first cohort of dissertation fellows in a new interdisciplinary program at NC State titled Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) funded through an NSF-IGERT grant. My dissertation cohort comprises five doctoral students from the fields of economics, entomology, biomathematics, and communication & rhetoric. Our research has focused on the potential use of genetically modified mosquitoes to combat dengue fever and has spanned our home fields as well as the fields of epidemiology, history, ethics, regulation, and public policy. The culmination of this collaboration was the co-authorship of the introductory chapter of the forthcoming text, Genetic Control of Malaria and Dengue, edited by Zach Adelman.

 

Through coursework, meetings, and colloquia, I have developed a working knowledge of the basic methods, ideologies, and vocabulary of all of the GES program fields. I understand the research of my cohort members on a fundamental level and together, we have fostered an environment of mutual respect. My exposure to the physical sciences, humanities, and social sciences outside of economics has expanded my standards of quality research and it is my goal to continue to include interdisciplinary collaboration in my research process. I have incorporated my GES cohort research into my dissertation by compiling a theoretical chapter on the economic considerations of mosquito-borne disease control. I have also utilized concepts and theories from entomology and cultural anthropology in forming economic hypotheses in my research on the impacts of dengue epidemics on male and female labor market outcomes. Finally, I have incorporated concepts from sociology into a dissertation chapter in which I construct an index of household economic status via principle components analysis (PCA) using easily observable characteristics of the home.

 

My enthusiasm for interdisciplinary engagement is accompanied by an equal passion for field research, which I have conducted in Lima and Iquitos, Peru through independent and group research trips funded by the GES program at NC State. I obtained a ground-level understanding of household, clinical, and entomological survey methodology and practiced methods of conducting both quantitative and qualitative research on the ground. I also gained an awareness of the cultural issues involved in insect-borne disease mitigation in both urban and rural areas of the Amazon. My field research experiences have proven invaluable to the development of my current research on dengue fever and I plan to seek research travel grants in order to gain first-hand knowledge of my future research locations whenever possible.

 

While I value interdisciplinary collaboration, I also strive to maintain rigorous standards in my analytical economic research. I have extensive independent empirical research experience using STATA and ArcGIS. Outside of my dissertation research, I have also carried out empirical coding of advanced econometric techniques as a research assistant at NC State. This practical experience is complemented by formal doctoral coursework on economic theory (including global health, development, and labor economics) and advanced econometrics (econometric methods, microeconometrics, and shrinkage estimators).

 

My extensive interdisciplinary and cross-cultural engagement along with my empirical experience has provided me with the foundation necessary to conduct quality analytical research on a range of issues related to insect-borne disease, genetic engineering technologies, and household demographics. My firm grasp on the entomological, epidemiological, and cultural aspects of dengue transmission in the Peruvian Amazon has informed the theoretical and analytical models that I rely on in my current research. I intend to apply the same conceptual framework of active interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration accompanied by rigorous empirical standards to all of my future research pursuits.