Bereket is a development behavioural economist and senior lecturer at the School of International Development (DEV), University of East Anglia (UEA). He joined the School in July 2004 after completing his DPhil (PhD) studies at the University of Oxford in 2003 and working as a post-doc in Bath for more than a year.
His main research interests revolve around understanding individual behaviour and how that affects welfare in developing countries. As such, one of the focuses of his research is on intra-household allocations; while earlier research mainly used econometric analysis of household data, his current work combines this with behavioural economics using data from experimental games in developing countries including Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Uganda. This research project was funded by an ESRC-DFID grant and involved an inter-disciplinary group of sociologists, anthropologists and economists.
A second area of his research concentrates on understanding social preferences, such as inequality aversion and envy; this project is funded by ESRC. Specifically, using money-burning experimental games the effect of social preferences on agricultural innovation in Ethiopia is be analysed.
Third, he is involved in a European Union funded inter-disciplinary research project that uses an experimental payment-for-environment service (PES) scheme to conserve the Nyungwe National Park in Rwanda. How cooperation between villagers affects the implementation of a PES will be examined, among other methods, using different versions of public good games.
In addition to these three main areas, he has done research on child health especially using anthropometric measurements, poverty and inequality, land distribution, market structures, household energy demand in developing countries, fisheries economics and mixed research methods (qualitative-quantitative analysis). He is developing a long-term research interest in using insights from psychology – specifically personality psychology – to understand intra-household allocations.