Ph.D. University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Affiliations:
J-PAL Invited Researcher
Member of the Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science, UEA
Editorial work and service:
Co-Guest Editor: Special Issue on Discrimination and Diversity at the Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization
Co-organiser of the Annual Discrimination and Diversity Workshop (5th Edition June 2025)
Contact:
University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park
o.borcan[at]uea.ac.uk
*** NEWS ***
June 2025: The project “Sextortion and entrepreneurship: a pilot study of interventions to prevent sexual exploitation of female entrepreneurs” funded by J-PAL Humanitarian Protection Initiative award ($72,600) has commenced. Baseline data collection and the intervention implemented by our partners Empow'her are now complete.
PIs: Oana Borcan, Co-PIs: Robert Gillanders (Dublin City University), Doris Aja-Eke (University College Dublin), Eugenie Maiga (Universite Norbert Zongo).
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May 2025: Honoured to receive the UEA Inclusivity Champion Award 2025 as part of the Student Union's Transforming Education Awards that also saw our School of Economics take the School of the Year title.
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I am an applied economist with a passion for development economics and policy evaluation informed by behavioural science.
I am deeply interested in how humans and societies can make better decisions and create stronger institutions to foster economic development and thrive. Here are some questions my research tackles:
How do we combat corruption and foster a culture of integrity for thriving societies?
How do we motivate and select civil servants to provide high quality public services?
How do we empower women and underrepresented groups to access opportunities, reach their potential and contribute to economic growth?
My methodological toolkit includes field, lab-in-the-field experiments, quasi-experimental designs, survey designs. These have been deployed in a range of settings, from recruitment of headteachers in Romanian schools, to evaluating the effectiveness of ethics training for police officers in Ghana and law graduates in Ukraine .
My international collaborations and consultancy work span development, integrity and anticorruption projects for the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and the United States Agency for International Development.
I also sometimes look at economic development through a historical lens, and my research has contributed new data and insights into the deep determinants of economic growth, like the Neolithic transition to agriculture and the accumulated experience of state institutions throughout history.
Some of my research has been published in top journals, such as the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Economic Growth.