Job Description

Terms of Reference

Consultant for Impact Evaluation in Ethiopia

“Measuring perceived economies of scale and implications for subjective well-being”

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) seeks to hire a consultant/collaborator for an on-going project in Ethiopia. This project aims to assess subjective economies of scale across different household types and examine their implications for households’ perceived relative poverty and well-being. We aim to assess how rural households conceptualize their relative resource needs based on household demographic composition, and whether these perceptions align with conventional equivalence scales commonly used to compare welfare indicators across household types. The project also explores the relationship between households’ perceived resource needs and multiple measures of subjective relative poverty, including self-reported assessments, peer rankings, and community-based rankings. For this purpose, IFPRI collected a large survey data recently. The successful candidate will actively contribute to the analysis of these data and writing of research paper(s) based on these data. The expected total duration of the assigned workload will be 50 working days, to be conducted over a 6-month period March 1, 2026-August 31, 2026, subject to renewal.

Essential Duties:

-Conduct a literature review on the above themes and topics

-Data cleaning and analysis based on already collected data.

-Present preliminary results to IFPRI staff and others

-Analyze data using advanced analytical methods.

-Draft research paper

-Revise paper and sections of a paper based on feedback from IFPRI staff

Required qualifications and experience:

-M.Sc. or PhD degree or its equivalent in Economics, Agricultural Economics, Statistics or closely related fields.

-A minimum of 3 years’ work experience in academia, research institution, private sector, or a development-oriented organization

-Excellent knowledge of microeconomic theory

-Experience in impact evaluation studies

-Excellent knowledge in STATA

-Demonstrated fluency in written and spoken English

-Familiarity with the literature on measurement of poverty, conflict and social protection literature

-Experience in Ethiopia and familiarity with Ethiopia’s agri-food system

Main deliverables: The candidate will deliver the following outputs.

●Cleaned data and do-files

oThoroughly cleaned and documented do-files

oCleaning and merging household data with administrative data

oDocumentation of data cleaning and analysis

●Draft paper and sections of paper

oDraft report/paper related to the above research questions

●Final working paper

oRefine report/ paper based on feedback and discussion with IFPRI staff

Key Deliverables:

1Cleaned data and do-files for all analyses (20 days)

2Draft report/paper on “measuring perceived economies of scale and implications for subjective well-being” (15 days)

3Revised report/paper on “measuring perceived economies of scale and implications for subjective well-being” (15 days)

Timeline: The expected total duration of the assigned workload will be 50 working days, to be conducted over about 6-month period, March 1, 2026-August 31, 2026, subject to renewal.