Anja Benshaul-Tolonen

Anja Benshaul-Tolonen is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Barnard College, Columbia University since 2015. She works on economic development, natural resource economics and economics of gender. One strand focuses on health, gender, and adolescence including topics relating to sanitation, menstruation and education. Another strand focuses on the local welfare effects of natural resource extraction in Africa, including effects on women’s employment and empowerment, health and criminality. Her research methods include quasi-experimental analysis and randomized control trials. She has peer-reviewed publications in The Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, World Development, and other journals. She is an affiliated faculty at the Center for Development Economics and Policy (CDEP) at Columbia University and an external research member at Oxford Center for Analysis of Resource Rich Economies (OxCarre) at University of Oxford. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from University of Gothenburg in 2015 and has been a visiting researcher at University of Oxford, University of California at Berkeley, Princeton University and New York University.

Research Interests

Adolescent/Youth
Education/Schools
Environmental Health
Family Policy
Fertility
Poverty
Programs
Development

Datasets

General Social Survey
Demographic and Health Surveys