Rate My Professor Madeline McKelway

Madeline McKelway is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, having joined the Department of Economics in 2021. She earned a B.S. from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2020. Prior to her appointment at Dartmouth, McKelway held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University's King Center on Global Development from 2020 to 2021. She is also affiliated with Dartmouth's Challenges and Opportunities of Globalization research cluster. Her work is recognized through affiliations with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

McKelway's research focuses on development economics, particularly the empowerment and employment of women in India, employing experimental methods such as randomized trials to examine self-efficacy, household communication, labor supply decisions, time use, and mental health among the elderly. Prominent publications include "Women's Self-Efficacy and Economic Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from India" (2025, 165 citations), "Depression and Loneliness among the Elderly in Low- and Middle-Income Countries" (Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2023, 101 citations), "Female Labour Force Participation" (VoxDevLit, 2024, 56 citations), "How Does Women's Employment Affect Their Time Use? Evidence from a Randomized Encouragement Design in India" (2025, 45 citations), "The Power of Persuasion: Causal Effects of Household Communication on Women's Employment" (NBER, 2025), "Effects of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Cash Transfers on Older Persons Living Alone in India: A Randomized Trial" (Annals of Internal Medicine, 2023, 27 citations), "Coupling Labor Supply Decisions: An Experiment in India" (CESifo Working Paper, 2021, 58 citations), and "Women's Employment and Empowerment: Descriptive Evidence" (AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2022). Her dissertation, "Essays on the Empowerment and Employment of Women in India" (MIT, 2020), underpins much of her research agenda. McKelway co-edited a literature review on women's labor force participation and featured on the VoxDev podcast discussing cross-country studies on women's employment barriers. She mentors Dartmouth Economic Research Scholars and contributes to postbaccalaureate fellowships in gender, labor, and development economics.