Aashish Mehta

Aashish Mehta is a development economist who studies globalization and structural change, and how they influence the role of education in labor markets. He also studies the political-economy of public services provision, and the role of education in social stratification. His publications cover many other aspects of development policy, and appear in a wide variety of economics and public policy journals.

Born and raised in India, he trained in economics and energy policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he completed his PhD in Agricultural and Applied Economics. Prior to joining UCSB's Department of Global Studies, he spent three years at the Asian Development Bank, working on electricity sector reforms, macroeconomic monitoring and employment-related research. He was a recipient of UCSB's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2017.

Selected Publications 

• Is employment globalizing?

• Will Studying Economics Make You Rich? A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of the Returns to College Major

• Manufacturing matters…but it’s the jobs that count

• Overeducation in developing economies: How can we test for it, and what does it mean?