Jayanta Sarkar

Thanks for visiting my site! I'm an Associate Professor at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. I received my Ph.D. in Economics from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. My academic journey started in 2006 as an Assistant Professor of Economics at Louisiana Tech University. In 2010, I made the big leap to move to Australia and joined QUT.

My research covers a wide range of topics, from economic growth and inequality to health, education, financial choices, and the economics of epidemiology. I've had the privilege of publishing in top journals like Health Economics and Economic Inquiry.

I love exploring how behavioral economics intersects with health and human capital. My work looks at how individual behaviours and economic incentives impact health and education outcomes. I use a mix of econometric analysis, theoretical modeling, and experimental approaches to tackle issues like time allocation for education, health, labour, and fertility, as well as the economics of vaccines and epidemiology.

Lately, I've been using experimental methods to explore how behaviour influences health decisions and test-taking behaviours, with insights that inform health and education policies. During pandemics, I've focused on how behavioural and social incentives shape health decisions, creating frameworks to understand vaccine and testing demand dynamics.

I am an Academic Editor of Economics at PLOS ONE.

Current Research Projects

Here's what I have been actively working on:

1. A multi-country lab-in-the-field experiment to explore whether and to what extent human preference for redistribution is sensitive to the source and nature of income inequality. Exciting findings ahead!

2. Using an RCT that provided customized micro-credit and training support to the poorest people in Bangladesh, I am exploring (with Jinnat Ara) whether the intervention improved patience and risk-taking among the program beneficiaries. Microcredit programs have not been evaluated in terms of their effect of desirable preferences - so this study results would be potentially impactful for experts and policymakers.

3. Adoption of AI in healthcare is supposed to a gamechanger, especially when it comes to improving clinical decision-making and improving workflow. I, with Sandeep Reddy and Chris Drovandi, am simulating a Bayesian model to predict potential cost-savings in UK and Australian healthcare sector.

4. Misinformation is ubiquitous in the era of social media. In certain healthcare domains, such as, infectious diseases, misinformation regarding efficacy of vaccinations, or side-effects of vaccines, could seriously dent uptake. However, misinformation and susceptibility to misinformation is dynamic. I am working on a Bayesian-epidemiological model to explore the effect of misinformation on belief about vaccine efficacy and how the dynamic interactions affect vaccine uptake and epidemiological trajectory.

5. Do social norms around household duties and carrier affect female labor force participation? I am working on a model of analyze how social norm affect creates a state-dependence of the equilibrium female human capital investment, fertility, and their labor force participation.

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