Anna Russo likes puzzles. They require persistence, group, and a view of the massive image. She brings an investigator’s eye to large institutional and societal challenges whose options can have wide-ranging, long-term impacts.
Russo’s path to MIT started with questions. She didn’t have the entire image but. “I had no concept what I needed to do with my life,” says Russo, who’s finishing her PhD in economics in 2024. “I used to be good at math and science and thought I needed to be a physician.”
Whereas finishing her undergraduate research at Yale College, the place she double majored in economics and utilized math, Russo found a ardour for problem-solving, the place she might apply an analytical lens to answering the sorts of thorny questions whose options might enhance coverage. “Empirical analysis is enjoyable and thrilling,” Russo says.
After Yale, Russo thought of what to do subsequent. She labored as a full-time analysis assistant with MIT economist Amy Finkelstein. Russo’s work with Finkelstein led her towards figuring out, learning, and growing solutions to complicated questions.
“My analysis combines concepts from two fields of financial inquiry — public finance and industrial group — and applies them to questions concerning the design of environmental and well being care coverage,” Russo says. “I like the way in which economists suppose analytically about social issues.”
Narrowing her focus
Finding out with and being suggested by famend economists as each an undergraduate and a doctoral pupil helped Russo slim her analysis focus, becoming extra items into the puzzle. “What drew me to MIT was its funding in its graduate college students,” Russo says.
Financial analysis meant digging into coverage questions, figuring out market failures, and proposing options. Doctoral examine allowed Russo to assemble information to carefully observe every line of inquiry.
“Doctoral examine means you get to jot down about one thing you’re actually concerned with,” Russo notes. This led her to check coverage responses to local weather change adaptation and mitigation.
“In my first yr, I labored on a undertaking exploring the notion that floodplain regulation design doesn’t do a superb job of incentivizing the suitable degree of growth in flood-prone areas,” she says. “How can economists assist governments persuade individuals to behave in society’s greatest curiosity?”
It’s vital to know institutional particulars, Russo provides, which can assist investigators establish and implement options.
“Suggestions, recommendation, and assist from college have been essential as I grew as a researcher at MIT,” she says. Past her two essential MIT advisors, Finkelstein and economist Nikhil Agarwal — educators she describes as “phenomenal, devoted advisors and mentors” — Russo interacted recurrently with college throughout the division.
Russo later found one other problem she hoped to resolve: inefficiencies in conservation and carbon offset applications. She set her sights on the USA Division of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program as a result of she believes it and applications like it may be improved.
The CRP is a land conservation plan administered by USDA’s Farm Service Company. In change for a yearly rental cost, farmers enrolled in this system comply with take away environmentally delicate land from agricultural manufacturing and plant species that can enhance environmental well being and high quality.
“I believe we are able to tweak this system’s design to enhance cost-effectiveness,” Russo says. “There’s a trove of information obtainable.” The info embrace data like public sale contributors’ bids in response to well-specified public sale guidelines, which Russo hyperlinks to satellite tv for pc information measuring land use outcomes. Understanding how landowners bid in CRP auctions can assist establish and enhance this system’s operate.
“We could possibly enhance focusing on and obtain cheaper conservation by adjusting the CRP’s scoring system,” Russo argues. Alternatives could exist to scale the incremental modifications beneath examine for different conservation applications and carbon offset markets extra typically.
Economics, Russo believes, can assist us conceptualize issues and suggest efficient various options.
The following puzzle
Russo desires to search out her subsequent problem whereas persevering with her analysis. She plans to proceed her work as a junior fellow on the Harvard Society of Fellows, after which she’ll be part of the Harvard Division of Economics as an assistant professor. Russo additionally plans to proceed serving to different budding economists since she believes within the significance of supporting different college students.
Russo’s advisors are a few of her largest supporters.
Finklestein emphasizes Russo’s curiosity, enthusiasm, and vitality as key drivers in her success. “Her real curiosity and curiosity in attending to the underside of an issue with the info — with an econometric evaluation, with a modeling difficulty — is the most effective antidote for [the stress that can be associated with research],” Finklestein says. “It is a key ingredient in her means to supply vital and credible work.”
“She’s additionally extremely beneficiant along with her time and recommendation,” Finklestein continues, “whether or not it is serving to an undergraduate analysis assistant along with her senior thesis, or serving to an advisor equivalent to myself navigate an information entry course of she’s beforehand been by.”
“As a substitute of an advisor-advisee relationship, working along with her on a thesis felt extra like a collaboration between equals,” Agarwal provides. “[She] has the maturity and smarts to supply pathbreaking analysis.
“Doctoral examine is a chance for college kids to search out their paths collaboratively,” Russo says. “If I can assist another person remedy a small piece of their puzzle, that’s an enormous optimistic. Analysis is a collection of many, many small steps ahead.”
Figuring out vital causes for additional investigation and examine will all the time be vital to Russo. “I additionally wish to dig into another market that’s not working properly and determine learn how to make it higher,” she says. “Proper now I’m actually enthusiastic about understanding California wildfire mitigation.”
Puzzles are made to be solved, in any case.
