I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Nevada, Reno.

I am an applied microeconomist working at the intersection of public policy, health, and food security. My research studies how safety-net and family-planning programs shape household well-being in the United States and India. Methodologically, I work extensively with difference-in-differences designs, including recent estimators developed for staggered treatment timing. 

My work includes a paper examining how the termination of SNAP benefits affected employment and food spending in the United States. I have also studied India's Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), the world's largest food security program, whose name roughly translates to the Prime Minister's Poor Welfare Scheme — and how it affected household food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. I am currently working on how family planning programs such as Mission Parivar Vikas (MPV) affect birth spacing and early childhood nutrition in India. 

I am on the job market for the 2026–2027 academic year. 

You can find my CV Here. 

Email: dbhattacharya@unr.edu