Namrata Kala

Namrata Kala is the Digital Equipment Corp. Associate Professor of Management and an Associate Professor in Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management within the Business & Economics faculty. She is an economist whose research focuses on environmental economics, development economics, and the economics of organizations. Her ongoing projects investigate how firms and households learn about and adapt to environmental change and regulation, the returns to environmental technologies, and the returns to worker training and incentives. These include studies on payments for ecosystem services to reduce crop residue burning, the impacts of managerial autonomy on firm performance, mechanization in agriculture, and productivity effects from energy-saving technologies and soft skills training.

Kala received her PhD in Environmental Economics from Yale University in 2015, an MPhil in Environmental Economics in 2012, an MA in International and Development Economics from Yale, and a BA (Honors) in Economics from Delhi University. Her career trajectory at MIT Sloan encompasses Assistant Professor in Applied Economics (2017-2023), W. Maurice Young (1961) Career Development Assistant Professor of Management (2018-2023), and promotion to Associate Professor with tenure in 2023. Previously, she was a Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at Harvard University and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (2015-2017). She has secured prestigious funding from the National Science Foundation, J-PAL initiatives, PEDL, and others, along with American Economic Review Excellence in Refereeing Awards (2018, 2022). Select publications feature “The Impact of Managerial Autonomy on Firm Outcomes” (Econometrica, 2024), “Money (Not) to Burn: Payments for Ecosystem Services to Reduce Crop Residue Burning” (AER: Insights, 2025), “Returns to On-the-job Soft Skills Training” (Journal of Political Economy, 2023), “Management and Shocks to Worker Productivity” (Journal of Political Economy, 2022), and “The Light and the Heat: Productivity Co-benefits of Energy-Saving Technology” (Review of Economics and Statistics, 2020). As Joint Managing Editor of the Economic Journal and Research Associate at the NBER (Development of the Economy and Energy Economics and Environment programs), Kala contributes substantially to her fields.

Professional Email: kala@mit.edu