Thomas Walker

Degree	Ph.D
Area of Interest	Risk Coping and Social Networks in Africa
Chair	Chris Barrett
Country of Origin	Australia
Email Address	tfw7@cornell.edu
Campus Address	469 Uris Hall

Thomas Walker, an Australian citizen, is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics at Cornell University. His dissertation will focus on the role of social networks in facilitating risk sharing among villagers in rural Ghana. He is also interested in issues of decision making and bargaining power within the household, and in the nature of altruistic behavior in society. Thomas holds a B.Ec. (Hons) from the University of New South Wales. Prior to commencing studies at Cornell, he was an economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia and a consultant to the World Bank. He has country experience in Samoa, Papua New Guinea and Ghana, and was involved in a survey of schools in Papua New Guinea in 2003. He has published papers on inequality decompositions in East Asia, the effect of the mining sector on poverty in Papua New Guinea, and the co-movement of Australian state business cycles. Thomas will be based in Accra in 2009 to work on the third round of the Ghana survey.