tmergo@uwaterloo.ca
519-885-1460 x 25208
Office: UTD 210
BA (Addis Ababa University); MA (MTSU); PhD (Berkeley)
Areas of Specialization: Development; Demography; International
Biography
I grew up in Ethiopia during a turbulent time which sparked my early interest in development economics, setting me on an improbable journey to pursuing higher education in Economics at Berkeley.
Research InterestsMy research seeks to gauge the causal impacts of various policy interventions and institutions on development, with emphasis on the African continent - a diverse region that is well-suited for such inquiry. With appointments at United college and the Economics department at the University of Waterloo, I aim to build a research portfolio that has some relevance to policy making for economic development in low-income regions.
Selected Publications
- Is low fertility really a problem? Population aging, dependency, and consumption, Science, 346(6206), 229 – 234, (2014) With R. Lee, et al.
- The effects of international migration on migrant-source households: Evidence from Ethiopian Diversity-Visa lottery migrants, World Development, 84(3), 69-81, (2016).
- Parental health outcomes of children's migration: Experimental evidence from Ethiopia, International Migration, 58(6), 153 - 170. (2020).
- Ethnically asymmetric political representation and the provision of public goods: theory and evidence from Ethiopia, Economics of Governance, 24(4), 519-547. (2023) - With A. Nimubona and H. Rus
- The effectiveness of English-medium instruction in primary education: evidence from Ethiopia, Applied Economics Letters, With L. Daba