We are seeking to hire an undergraduate student to work on a research project focused on place-based policy in India.

• Purpose of the role (brief overview of the project): We are studying the local effects of the Special Economic Zones, a popular type of place-based policy on local economic development, in India. By exploiting the variation from SEZ approvals versus denials and staggered timing of SEZs becoming operational, we study the effect of these zones on firm entry, firm economic performance and spillovers onto incumbents. In addition, we study the effects on local economic development by examining impacts on modern sector employment, service sector employment, literacy etc. We are seeking a research assistant to help with creating a spatial dataset of SEZ polygons for our project.
• Key duties and responsibilities:  The student will work as a research assistant for Ph.D. candidates Joaquin Endara and Aneesha Parvathaneni (PIs). The main task is to assist with the geocoding of SEZ polygons. This will involve looking up SEZ locations (the PIs will provide a list) and tracing the polygons. The PIs will train the candidate to perform this task. 

• Required qualifications (skills, coursework, experience): We prefer to hire students with some programming experience in R/ QGIS/ Stata. While this is preferred, this is not required. 

Primary contact person, supervisor, and the email address where applicants should send materials: jendara@umich.edu with aneeshap@umich.edu cc-ed