Dr Katsushi Imai is Reader in Economics in the Department of Economics, School of Social Sciences, at The University of Manchester. He joined the University of Manchester in September 2004 and has served as Co-Programme Director of the MSc Development Economics and Policy since 2013. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the Global Development Institute, an Honorary Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, Kobe University, and an Associate Fellow at the Sheffield Institute for International Development / Institute for Global Sustainable Development.

Katsushi graduated with a BA in Economics from the University of Tokyo, an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an MSc in Economics for Development from the University of Oxford, and a DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford. Before joining Manchester, he held research and teaching posts at the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, Bayes Business School, formerly Cass Business School, and Royal Holloway, University of London.

His research focuses on applied econometric analysis of poverty, inequality, vulnerability, gender, nutrition, health, agriculture and public-policy evaluation in developing countries, with a long-standing regional focus on India and Asia, and further work on countries including Vietnam, Bangladesh, Nepal, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, China and Thailand. His work has examined topics such as multidimensional poverty, household vulnerability to shocks, child and adult nutrition, microfinance, social protection, employment-guarantee schemes, pensions, conditional cash transfers, unpaid care work, conflict and child health, and the role of agriculture in poverty reduction.

Katsushi has published widely in leading journals including World Development, The Journal of Development Studies, Review of Development Economics, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Agricultural Economics, Review of Income and Wealth, Food Policy, Oxford Development Studies, Social Indicators Research and the Journal of African Economies. His recent publications include work on unpaid elderly care and gender norms in Thailand in World Development and on consumption smoothing and risk-coping mechanisms in rural India in Review of Income and Wealth. His current research projects include violent conflict and child health in India, poverty and subjective well-being using the TVSEP (Thailand Vietnam Socio Economic Panel), the long-term impacts of PROGRESA / Oportunidades, the intergenerational educational effects of Agent Orange exposure, and overskilling and overeducation in the UK.

Katsushi is Editor-in-Chief of Review of Development Economics, having previously served as Co-Editor. In this role, he contributes to editorial decisions, quality assurance, editorial strategy, Special Issues, early-career-researcher initiatives and the internationalisation of the journal. During his period of editorial leadership, the journal’s Journal Impact Factor increased substantially, its Scopus/SCImago standing moved to Q1, and its ABDC rating was upgraded to A.

He has also led international research-capacity-building activities. He is Principal Investigator of the British Academy project “Helping Early Career Researchers in Vietnam and Thailand to develop their capability to publish in high-impact journals in Development Economics”, which has supported writing workshops, mentoring and a Review of Development Economics Special Issue on “Development Challenges in Asian Middle-Income Countries”.

Katsushi has undertaken consultancy and advisory work for IFAD, the United Nations and other international organisations on poverty, nutrition, agriculture, vulnerability, social protection and policy evaluation. He has also served as an external examiner for the University of Sussex and the University of East Anglia and has examined PhD theses for several universities.

His teaching is research-led and focuses on applied development economics, applied econometrics and research design. He currently leads ECON60552 Applied Development Economics Project and has taught postgraduate and doctoral-level applied econometrics and development economics at Manchester and partner institutions overseas.

See Katsushi’s publications and areas of PhD supervision for further details.

Specific research interests:

Keywords: Inequality, Poverty, Multidimensional Poverty, Nutrition, Health, Vulnerability and Risk, Gender, Social Norms, Care Work, Early-Life Shocks, Household Data, Panel Data, Geospatial Data, Applied Micro-econometrics, Asia, Public Policy and Programme Evaluation

Dr Katsushi Imai’s research focuses on applied micro-econometric analyses of poverty, inequality, vulnerability, nutrition, health, gender, social norms and public-policy evaluation in developing and emerging economies. He is particularly interested in using large household survey data, panel data, time-use data and geospatially matched datasets to examine how households and individuals experience, respond to and recover from economic, social, environmental and political shocks.

One strand of his research examines household vulnerability, risk-coping behaviour and welfare dynamics. This includes work on how rural households respond to idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks, and how public policies and informal mechanisms affect poverty, nutrition and resilience over time. For example, he has studied the role of public works programmes, including employment-guarantee schemes, in reducing household risk and vulnerability, and has examined poverty and undernutrition dynamics using large-scale household datasets.

A second strand evaluates public policies and development interventions using applied micro-econometric methods. His work has covered social protection, employment programmes, pensions, microfinance, conditional cash transfers, education policies and other interventions. A recurring methodological focus is how to address endogeneity, programme placement and self-selection problems in estimating policy impacts.

More recently, his research has expanded to gender, care work, social norms and early-life shocks. Recent and ongoing projects examine unpaid elderly care and social gender norms in Thailand, the effects of riots on birthweight and child nutrition in India, and the dynamics of monetary poverty, multidimensional poverty and subjective well-being using the Thailand Vietnam Socio Economic Panel (TVSEP). These projects connect household behaviour, social norms, vulnerability and human development outcomes, with particular attention to gendered and intergenerational inequalities.

Dr Imai is also interested in the role of agriculture, rural livelihoods and structural transformation in poverty reduction and food security, especially in Asia. Across these areas, his research aims to combine rigorous empirical identification with development-policy relevance.

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Recent and Current Projects:

Dr Katsushi Imai's recent and current research focuses on applied econometric analyses of poverty, inequality, vulnerability, gender, health, nutrition, agriculture, social norms and public-policy evaluation in developing and emerging economies.

A recent project with Dr Minh Tam Bui and Prof Ivo Vlaev examines unpaid elderly care and gender norms in Thailand. The paper, “Unpaid care work for the elderly in Thailand: does the social gender norm on altruistic behavior matter?”, was published in World Development in 2026. Using nationally representative Thai time-use data and labour-force data, the study develops an altruistic time ratio and a district-area-level measure of social gender norms on altruism. It shows that social gender norms increase elderly care time for women while reducing it for men, and that significant trade-offs exist between elderly care, leisure and paid work.

Katsushi is also working with Dr Asuka Yamamoto and Prof Bina Agarwal on a project entitled “Riots, Child Health, and Gender Bias in India”. The project combines the National Family Health Survey-5 with the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data using GIS-based matching. It investigates how prenatal exposure to riots affects birthweight, height-for-age, stunting and gender-differentiated child health outcomes in India, with particular attention to how local gender norms and son preference shape the vulnerability of girls and boys to early-life shocks.

A further ongoing project with Dr Minh Tam Bui and Dr Thi Thu Hien Nguyen analyses shocks and the dynamics of monetary poverty, multidimensional poverty and subjective well-being using the Thailand Vietnam Socio Economic Panel. The study uses Vietnamese and Thai panel data for 2008, 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2017. It constructs multidimensional poverty measures using both counting and Item Response Theory approaches, and examines the effects of drought, Agent Orange exposure and other shocks on poverty and future-oriented subjective well-being. The results suggest that drought worsens anticipatory anxiety, Agent Orange exposure has persistent adverse effects on multidimensional deprivation in Vietnam, and monetary poverty and subjective well-being are dynamically linked.

Katsushi was a Co-Investigator in the FCDO-funded COVID-19 Learning, Evidence and Research Programme in Bangladesh project, “Has the COVID-19 pandemic worsened multidimensional poverty and vulnerability? Evidence from Bangladesh” (£99,752.20; 2022–24). The project, conducted with Prof David Fielding (PI), Prof Selim Raihan, Dr Upasak Das and Dr Mahtab Uddin, examined the short- and medium-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on monetary poverty, multidimensional poverty, vulnerability, migration, social protection and subjective well-being in Bangladesh, using nationally representative longitudinal household survey data.

Katsushi is Principal Investigator of the British Academy project, “Helping Early Career Researchers in Vietnam and Thailand to develop their capability to publish in high-impact journals in Development Economics” (£29,732; 2024–26). The project supports writing workshops, mentoring and international research-capacity building for early-career researchers in Vietnam and Thailand. The workshop team includes Dr Minh Tam Bui, Prof Andy McKay, Dr Thanh Bui, Dr Nguyen Ngoc Anh, Prof Binh Tran-Nam and Prof Sai Ding. The project has also generated a Review of Development Economics Special Issue on “Development Challenges in Asian Middle-Income Countries”.

Katsushi was also a Co-Investigator in the GCRF FutureDAMS project, “DAMS 2.0: Design and assessment of resilient and sustainable interventions in water-energy-food environment mega-systems” (£9.46m; 2017–22). His contribution focused on economic analysis within the broader water-energy-food-environment systems framework.

Dr Katsushi Imai welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in applied micro-econometric research using large household surveys, panel, geospatial or administrative data in developing and emerging economies. He is particularly interested in supervising projects that combine careful empirical identification with policy-relevant questions in development economics.

Possible areas of supervision include:

A. poverty, multidimensional poverty and vulnerability;

B. nutrition, health, child development and early-life shocks;

C. gender, care work, social norms and intra-household allocation;

D. impact evaluation of public policies, including social protection, employment programmes, pensions, microfinance, conditional cash transfers and education policies;

E. food security, agriculture, rural livelihoods and structural transformation;

F. household risk-coping behaviour, resilience and responses to shocks;

G. inequality, including gender, spatial, ethnic, health and intergenerational inequalities;

H. subjective well-being, expectations, future-oriented anxiety and their relationship with poverty dynamics.

Recent and ongoing projects illustrate these interests. One recent project examines unpaid elderly care and social gender norms in Thailand using nationally representative time-use and labour-force data. Another studies the effects of riots on birthweight and child nutrition in India by combining NFHS-5 with geocoded conflict data. A further project uses the Thailand Vietnam Socio Economic Panel to analyse the dynamics of monetary poverty, multidimensional poverty and subjective well-being, including the effects of drought and Agent Orange exposure.

Prospective students should normally be willing to work with quantitative methods and large datasets as a central part of the dissertation. Topics with a strong applied micro-econometric component and a clear development-policy relevance are particularly welcome.