Niroj Bhattarai, PhD.

Assistant Professor and Director of Online Studies

Economics


Fields of Expertise

Business, Economics, Policy

Areas of Interest

Education and its role in development, WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene)


Biography

Dr. Niroj Bhattarai is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Colorado State University, and a founding member/Research Associate at the Poverty Action Center, in the Regional Economic Development Institute at the Department of Economics. His research is primarily in the field of education and its role in development, particularly through field interventions—Dr. Bhattarai and his students, in partnership with Rotary, built running water infrastructure and gender-specific toilets in a school in a village in Nepal where they were able to document increases in both enrollment and attendance, particularly for girls. His recently published paper, “Factors Affecting School Attendance and Implications for Student Achievement by Gender in Nepal”, along with Drs. Anita Alves-Pena and Alexandra Bernasek, studied factors affecting school attendance in rural and urban Nepal, where they discovered that menstruation, and lack of facilities, played a major role in girls’ attendance and experience in school. Dr. Niroj Bhattarai received his undergraduate degree from Hiram College in Ohio and his PhD in Economics from Colorado State University.