Meet the Team
Principal Investigators
Degye Goshu
Dr. Degye Goshu is currently a senior researcher at the Ethiopian Economics Association (EEA). He had pursued his studies in Agricultural Economics. He has 20 years of postgraduate teaching and research experience. He was an Associate Professor of Economics at Haramaya and Kotebe Metropolitan universities. His research experience includes welfare analysis, food and nutrition security, efficiency and productivity, market and price dynamics, impact evaluation, and livelihood analysis. He has published over 58 research works in reputed journals and books. He has coordinated various research and capacity building projects.
Dr. Degye Goshu, in partnership with Dr. Mengistu Ketema, will lead the gender profitability gap analysis for Ethiopia and the exploration of the relationship between gender and the economy in Ethiopia.
Gisella Kagy
Dr. Gisella Kagy is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Vassar College with a research focus on development economics. Her research interests broadly cover how gender, firms, and labor markets interact and women’s empowerment. She has conducted experiments and collected original data in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Bangladesh. She holds a B.A. in mathematics and Ph.D. and MA in Economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She received a Hewlett Foundation/IIE Dissertation Fellowship to study women’s labor market participation in Bangladesh.
Dr. Gisella Kagy, in partnership with Dr. Morgan Hardy, will lead the research team in analyzing the gender profit gap at the global level.
Website: http://pages.vassar.edu/gisellakagy/
Mengistu Ketema
Dr. Mengistu Ketema is currently a senior researcher at the Ethiopian Economics Association (EEA). He obtained his BSc and MSc degrees in Agricultural Economics from Haramaya University and his Ph.D. Degree from the Justus-Liebig University of Giessen, Germany. He has 21 years of experience in research and teaching. He has published more than 60 articles in reputable journals, 10 proceeding papers, and five book chapters. He has also successfully coordinated and completed six collaborative projects.
Dr. Mengistu Ketema, in partnership with Dr. Degye Goshu, will lead the gender profitability gap analysis for Ethiopia and the exploration of the relationship between gender and the economy in Ethiopia.
Morgan Hardy
Dr. Morgan Hardy an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Social Science Division of New York University Abu Dhabi. Her research is in development economics, with a topical focus on firms and labor markets. Much of her work involves field experiments and/or original data collection in Africa. She has conducted field projects in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Nigeria, on topics including combating youth unemployment, improving small business profits, community-level impacts of industrialization, gender pay inequality, and the dynamics of small business owner networks. She holds a B.A. in mathematics and philosophy from Columbia University and a Ph.D. and MA in Economics from Brown University, where she received an NSF/IGERT fellowship for interdisciplinary training and fieldwork as well as a Hewlett Foundation/IIE Dissertation Fellowship to study women’s labor market participation in the developing world. She is keenly interested in women’s economic empowerment, social/business networks, and informal economic activity in Africa.
Dr. Morgan Hardy, in partnership with Dr. Gisella Kagy, will lead the research team in analyzing the gender profit gap at the global level.
Website: https://sites.google.com/a/nyu.edu/morganhardy/home
Project Manager
Lamessa Tariku
Lamessa Tariku is a project coordinator for the Gender Profitability Gap (GPG) project and based at the Ethiopian Economics Association (EEA). Lamessa holds his BA degree in Economics from University of Gondar and MSc in Economics from Addis Ababa University. He pursued his PhD in Economics at University of Milan, Italy. He has also been a World Bank fellow at the World Bank head quarter in the Africa region. He has more than 13 years of research and teaching experience at higher institutions in Ethiopia. He has an experience of leading and coordinating multi-year, multi-dimensional projects implemented across different parts of Ethiopia and East Africa financed by international development partners such as IFAD, UNIDO, World Bank, Africa Development Bank. His research interests lie in the area of firm performance and business environment; Women Economic Empowerment (WEE); policy and program evaluations; and trade-energy-environment nexus.
Lamessa is responsible for following-up and coordinating both the global and national components of the project.
Post-Docs
Dr. Abule Mehare
Dr. Abule Mehare is an Assistant Professor of agricultural and resource economics at Haramaya University. He has 13 years teaching and research experience. His research interest covers price and market dynamics, impact of microeconomic policies, and livelihood analysis. He holds BA in Economics from Haramaya University, MSc in Agricultural and applied economics from University of Malawi and University of Pretoria, PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from Bunda College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR). He has published over 14 Journal articles. He also coordinated and successfully completed several national and international research projects.
In collaboration with the global team, Dr. Abule is leading the meta-analysis component of the GPG reject and actively engaged in the national component of the Gender profitability Gap analysis.
Dr. Nusrat Jimi
Dr. Nusrat Jimi Jimi is a Faculty Research Associate at the Department of Economics, Vassar College. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Binghamton University - State University of New York in August 2021.
She is a development economist concentrating on microeconomic development issues in human capital, entrepreneurship, and the labor market and health effects of climate change in the context of developing countries.
Pre-Docs
Denat Ephrem Negatu
Denat Ephrem Negatu is currently a Research Program Associate at Vassar College. She graduated from New York University Abu Dhabi with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and minor in Business Studies and Natural Sciences. Before moving to Vassar College, she also worked for the Ethiopian Economics Association as an RA among seasoned researcher for more than six months. Ms. Denat has more than 2 years of research assistantship experience during her undergraduate program where she worked along with Dr. Wifag Adnan on labor economics. In the near future, she plans to attend a graduate program that combines data analytics and economics.
Juan Pablo Rossi
Juan Pablo Rossi is graduated from New York University Abu Dhabi with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a minor in Mathematics, and is currently working as a Research program Associate at Vassar College. For the year before relocating to Vassar, he worked for the Ethiopian Economics Association as an RA from multiple locations for more than 6 months. While doing his undergraduate program, he worked for a year at NYU’s Center for Experimental Social Science (CESS) under supervision from Dr. Rebecca Morton and Dr. Nicholas Haas. In the near future, he plans to attend a PhD program in Economics.
Adem Feto
Adem Feto is a graduate of Bahir Dar University’s PhD program in the speciailization of Macroeconomics, General Equilibrium and Policy Analysis in 2022. He has been working as a lecturer and researcher at Arsi University (formerly Adama Science and Technology University) since 2011. Besides, he worked as a senior research fellow and community service provider. Moreover, he has provided academic advice, reviewed students’ thesis papers, conducted research and community services/project, contributed as a referee/reviewer in various international journals and appeared on more than 21 television and radio programmes. Curerntly, he is serving as a researcher at Ethiopian Economics Association (EEA).
He (and his colleagues) has been producing Eighteen (18) research works on various aspects of the Ethiopian and the global economy from which Eight (8) of them are published. His research interests include Macroeconomics, General Equilibrium, DSGE Modelling, Policy Economics, Political Economics, International Economics, Development Economics, Agricultural Economics, Climate Change, Consultancy Service and Gender Differentials.