Joshua Merfeld, assistant professor at the KDI School of Public Policy and Management in Sejong, South Korea, will present “Poverty Measurement and Consumption Smoothing” as part of the School of Public Policy’s Spring Speaker Series.

Merfeld’s research and teaching interests include the microeconomics of development, applied microeconometrics, labor markets in developing countries, and poverty. Some of his previous and ongoing research looks at labor productivity and wages, agriculture, structural transformation, poverty, and public works programs. Dr. Merfeld is particularly interested in how market failures affect household and individual resource allocation decisions and in how we can improve the measurement of poverty.