Martina Kirchberger

Martina Kirchberger

Ussher Assistant Professor in Economics, Trinity College

Martina is the Ussher Assistant Professor in Economics at Trinity College Dublin and a Research Affiliate at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. She is a development economist with a particular interest in using micro data to answer macro questions in the areas of urbanization, infrastructure, the construction sector, labor markets, and spatial mobility. She uses big data, such as mobile phone and smartphone app data, to understand the effects of large infrastructure investments and spatial frictions. In recent work she examines the role of distortions in the investment sector for capital accumulation. She is also involved in two ongoing randomized controlled trials with large-scale construction firms. Her work has been published in the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Urban Economics, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and the World Bank Economic Review. Over the past fifteen years Martina has worked with a number of governments in Africa and been a consultant to the World Bank, the United Nations Children's Fund and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Tanzania and Mali. Prior to joining Trinity College Dublin, she was an Earth Institute Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Columbia University. She received her DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford in 2014.