Laura Schechter

Laura Schechter is the Anderson-Bascom Professor in the department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is an international development economist whose research lies at the intersection of development economics and behavioral economics. Much of her work uses experiments to help understand behavior in the context of trust and trustworthiness, and risk and vulnerability. She is especially interested in social networks in developing countries, and technology adoption. Some of her current projects focus on extension agent performance, monitoring of government employees, and adoption of improved sanitation technologies. She is associate editor at the Economic Journal. She received her Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 2005.