Kira Villa

University of New Mexico

Kira Villa received her PhD in Applied Economics from Cornell University in 2014 and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.  She is an applied microeconomist with research interests in the areas of food, nutrition, health, and human development in the context of poverty and economic development.  Currently her research focuses on the effects of personality, cognition, and shocks on education and labor market outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa.  She is also researching child development and the mechanisms linking early childhood well-being to later life outcomes in a developing country context.