He was formerly an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He was also a visiting scholar in Dipartimento di Studi su Politica Diritto e Societa at the University of Palermo. He received his PhD in economics from the State University of New York, Binghamton. His research focuses on applied econometrics across a broad array of fields in economics, including economic growth, microfinance, international trade, environmental economics, and health economics. His work has been published in journals such as the Economic Journal, the European Economic Review, Health Economics, the Journal of Applied Econometrics, the Journal of Econometrics, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and Statistica Sinica.