Melinda Vigh

Melinda Vigh is a PhD Candidate in Development Economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Tinbergen Institute in the Netherlands.

She took a break in her PhD to work as a researcher and research coordinator at the Amsterdam Institute for International Development between 2011-2015. During her work, she gained extensive experience in designing and conducting impact evaluation studies in Mozambique, Indonesia and Rwanda.

Her research focuses on program evaluation, specifically, of technology adoption. She enjoys doing empirical research to uncover statistical relationships present in the data, particularly when the findings can inform policymakers.

She also worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Sustainable Development group at the DIW German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin between 2018-2019.

Working Papers

The complementarity of community-based water and sanitation interventions: evidence from Mozambique (2020), Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper, with Chris Elbers and Jan Willem Gunning.

Intergenerational mobility, human capital accumulation, and growth in India (2018), WIDER Working Paper, with Roy van der Weide.

Picking Winners: Measuring the Effectiveness of Selectively Placed Policy Interventions (2017), Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper, with Chris Elbers.

Effectiveness of Water and Sanitation Interventions: the One Million Initiative in Mozambique (2011), Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper, with Jan Willem Gunning, Samuel Godfrey, Chris Elbers and Matteus van der Velden.

Investment under Risk with Discrete and Continuous Assets: Solution and Estimation (2009), Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper, with Jan Willem Gunning and Chris Elbers.

Work in Progress

Household mobility as response to an extreme weather event: Insights from novel trajectory data, with Kati Kraehnert, Christian Knoth, Henning Teickner, Myagmartseren Purevtseren, Munkhnaran Sugar and Edzer Pebesma

PhD Thesis

Climbing the socioeconomic ladder (2020), VU University Amsterdam.