This spring, Raghav Warrier, a Research Professional (RP) with the Becker Friedman Institute (BFI), won the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). NSF’s GRFP is a prestigious fellowship that funds graduate study for students who show promise for innovation in their field.
Raghav has spent the last two years as an RP with BFI’s Predoctoral Research in Economics Program (PREP), working under Professor Torgovitsky after completing his bachelor’s degree in computer science and mathematics from Arizona State University (ASU). Raghav will begin his PhD in Economics this fall in UChicago’s Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics.
Raghav’s work with Professor Torgovitsky helped inspire his proposal for NSF’s GRFP. Professor Torgovitsky’s mentorship impressed upon Raghav the value of taking empirical settings that are already known to be interesting among the scholarly community, and seeing what new insights can be drawn from applying more novel methods. 
“He really values clarity in your ideas, and with that, presenting them concisely.” Raghav said of his mentor. “You should always be transparent and honest about the assumptions you make and the limitations of your framework.”
Raghav’s proposed research aims to understand the effects of work requirement policies on employment behavior and earnings of public housing recipients. The primary motivation for his proposal is the Clinton administration’s overhaul of welfare policies, including the 1996 Moving to Work Demonstration, which gave selected public housing authorities the flexibility to test work requirements and other locally designed innovations for tenants of federal public housing. Location also played into Raghav’s choice of topic, as Chicago is home to one of the country’s largest public housing authorities. Raghav notes that it was important to him to focus on a policy that directly affects many residents of Chicago.
Raghav learned about NSF while studying at ASU. During the application process, his peers in PREP, PhD collaborators, professors at BFI, and professors at ASU provided Raghav with feedback on his application. Going back to Professor Torgovitsky’s teachings, Raghav kept his proposal clear and concise, emphasizing organized ideas over complexity. Additionally, he focused on connecting his ideas to existing government policies.
Raghav noted that receiving the fellowship “solidified to me that other researchers also think that these kinds of questions could be interesting.” Raghav is interested in policy-focused work; however, through conversations with UChicago faculty, he realized the importance of studying questions that he finds interesting and meaningful, even if it takes some time for the findings to reach the policy world.
As his time at BFI comes to a close, Raghav is grateful for the institute’s role in his success as an RP, incoming graduate student, and NSF Graduate Research Fellow. “Being here has been helpful in getting immersed in economics. Whether that’s through my peers and other predocs, or the presentations that we get to see, like a BFI sponsored lunch event or an RP workshop.”