In a classroom, I can teach you how the world is supposed to work. Study abroad shows you how it actually works. Dr. Darshak Patel joins me to talk about taking students to Kenya to watch a universal basic income program up close, and why he would rather learn a new country alongside his students than teach one he already knows.

Darshak is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Kentucky. We met there as graduate students. Since then, we have written many papers together, co-founded The Econ Games, and continue working to make economics accessible to students.

In this episode, we cover

1. The importance of global education and how to get started
2. How the Econ Games Started
3. The importance of community in economics

Did you study abroad? Tell us in the comments what lesson stuck with you.

Show Notes

1. Art of Econ paper- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2612992
2. Darshak’s previous podcast appearance https://youtu.be/7clw4vTIi5I?si=cAOI4wMl4um3f3y9
3. The Fed Decision https://youtu.be/NR12z1Rs07U?si=fDxdDPW6qrPbdSIU
4. Once Brothers- ESPN 30 for 30 paper https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.4284/0038-4038-2013.299
5. Once Brothers Documentary https://youtu.be/fVw5vnukwJ4?si=TBYhqMkE74IWvS-C

Development economics explained simply: what's the difference between the macro and micro sides of the field?

Development economics sounds like a topic for "somewhere else." It's not.

In my latest Decode Econ conversation, I sat down with two economists who study the same big question — how economies, and the people inside them, actually develop — from completely different altitudes. Dr. Amrita Dhar tracks capital flows into emerging markets and, closer to home, how U.S. states split the bill for K-12 schools. Dr. Shreyasee Das studies what happens inside a household in rural India after the lights come on.

That second one stopped me. Shreyasee's research on rural electrification found that as women gained more independence, information, and control over their own lives, fertility often dropped — but in some households, so did stability and safety. Progress doesn't move in a straight line. Sometimes it just moves the friction somewhere else.

We also got into something I think about a lot: development economics isn't just a lens for poor countries. Flint's water crisis, schools without air conditioning, sewage problems in the rural South — the same forces we study abroad are sitting here in our own zip codes.

And we closed on something I want to actually do something about, not just talk about: why the researchers doing this work — especially women — aren't the ones you see on podcasts and panels. That's turning into a real project between the three of us now.

Resources

Amrita’s Resources

1. Poor Economics by Abhijeet Banerjee and Esther Duflo https://amzn.to/4cIhgFd

2. Analytical Development Economics - Kaushik Basu https://amzn.to/4cBAQTG

Shreyasee

1. Amartya Sen's Capability Approach Amartya Sen's Capability Approach https://amzn.to/4gXNf5C

2. Amartya Sen's Tanner Lecture #1: Equality of What https://tannerlectures.org/lectures/equality-of-what/

3. Amartya Sen's Tanner Lecture #2: Standard of Living

https://tannerlectures.org/lectures/the-standard-of-living/

4. Women's Role in Economic Development by Ester Boserup

https://amzn.to/4AbIJsZ

No homework. No midterms. No final exam. In this episode of Decode Econ, I sit down with Dr. Shishir Shakya, an economist at Appalachian State University, who redesigned his entire econometrics and statistics courses around one question: what happens if we stop preparing students for the job market of 2022 and start preparing them for 2028?We get into:Why he cut his curriculum down to the "absolute theoretical minimum" — and how that made his students learn fasterHis AI-based oral exam system that catches understanding gaps multiple-choice tests missThe uncomfortable question I pushed him on: if students can't use AI, why can professors?Why he thinks every student — marketing, supply chain, or otherwise — needs to start thinking like an engineerWhat "flourishing" means in an AI economy, and why creative destruction isn't just a threatIf you're an educator, a student, or just trying to figure out what skills actually matter in an AI-driven labor market, this conversation will change how you think about learning itself.Connect with Dr. Shishir Shakya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shishir-shakya/ Subscribe to Decode Econ for weekly breakdowns of the economy and your place in it.00:49 – Intro: How AI is disrupting education02:17 – No homework, no midterms, no finals — what replaced them11:22 – The moment AI broke his old teaching model16:05 – Inside his AI-powered oral exam system24:33 – "If students can't use AI, why can professors?"39:06 – Preparing students for the job market of 2028