Her major fields of interest are development economics and microeconomic theory. She uses a combination of theoretical and empirical tools to study the equilibrium emergence, evolution, and persistence of organizations and institutional structure, particularly in the unique environments of developing economies. She specializes in understanding informal financial institutions and relationships by developing empirically-testable models and taking the theoretical predictions to data. She also studies institutions which influence the production and transmission of information, such as credit registries and media channels, as well as markets in which traditional price mechanisms fail.