Dr Kate Orkin is Associate Professor in Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government. Kate completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Cape Town. She did her MPhil and DPhil at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, finishing in 2015.

Kate is an applied microeconomist, working in labour, public, development and behavioural economics. She mainly runs large field experiments in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and South Africa, developing and testing real-world interventions in partnership with governments and NGOs. Her research studies frictions in urban developing country labour markets that prevent young people from finding work; the role of mental health in labour market decisions; the design of cash transfer and wage subsidy programmes; and the role of aspirations in economic decision-making

Kate has worked extensively at the interface of research and policy in taking successful evidence-based interventions to scale. She is an advisor to the South African presidency on the design of cash and active labour market programmes. She provided technical support to the recent roll out of a new unconditional grant to the unemployed, one of the largest expansions of the social safety net in recent years

Teaching

Kate co-convenes the Evidence in Public Policy module on the Masters in Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government. The module provides students with an understanding of how to evaluate the impacts and implementation of policies, as well as how policymakers gather, generate, and use evidence in practice. In addition, the module introduces students to quantitative methods that are used to generate descriptive and causal evidence.

She also designed and led one of two core modules on Evidence in Public Policy on the ‘Economics for Foreign Policy’ course, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s flagship economic training course for non-economists. Designed to be delivered online, ‘Economics for Foreign Policy’ (or EFP) provides an opportunity for staff across the FCDO to improve their understanding of economic concepts and how to apply this knowledge to policy issues in their role and/or geography. Economics for Foreign Policy is the first bespoke online course developed by the Blavatnik School of Government as part of our Executive Programmes suite and will be available to FCDO staff for the next three years.

Kate's course on Evidence in Public Policy refines participants’ practical skills in the use of evidence, data and secondary research, and guides them in applying these skills and economic concepts to real-world situations. It is aimed at those who do not have formal economics training.