I am currently working on two main projects (among other stuff). 

1. My first project, which I am working with Dr Dessie Ambaw at University of South Australia and Dr Habtamu Edjigu at the ACET,  concerns estimating the effects of landlocked geography.

Identifying the economic effects of landlockedness is challenging as there are a host of permanent confounding factors (think about the influence of institutions, colonial history, etc. on current economic development). To estimate the effect of landlocked geography, Dessie, Habtamu and I explore a unique episode of state separation, where Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia following the collapse of Ethiopia's ruling communist government in 1991. As Eritrea occupies the entire coastline of the previously united Ethiopia, Ethiopia became de jure (then, de facto) landlocked following its separation from Eritrea. We exploit this quasi-natural experiment to study the impact of landlockedness on Ethiopian trade and the persistence of this impact a few years after the separation was complete (i.e. Ethiopia became both de jure and de facto landlocked).

2. My second project, which I am working with Prof. Zhijie Xiao at Boston College, develops a new instrumental variable type estimation technique to estimate and identify causal effects where the instrumental is possibly irrelevant.