Subigya Baral
Subigya Baral is a rising junior at Pitzer College from Kathmandu, Nepal, double majoring in Economics and Data Science with a minor in mathematics. His interest lies in the intersection of economics and data, and he hopes to use advanced data science tools to solve complex economics and healthcare problems. He is interested in pursuing research in development economics and hopes to use his skills to serve underrepresented communities and ensure an equitable future for everyone. After graduation, he intends to pursue graduate studies.
He works as a research assistant at the Lowe Institute of Political Economy, an economic think tank at Claremont Mckenna College in Claremont, California. He uses advanced statistical and econometric techniques to identify the causal effects of changes in tax prices and their incidence on consumers in the United States since 1913. He also spearheads data collection of consumer tax data of more than 40 years, digitizes and analyzes the historical data using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, and uses Python to identify key patterns in the data.
As a SUMR scholar, he works with Professor Scott Lorch, Betsy Salazar, and Nik Novick to investigate the influence of private equity (PE) ownership of hospitals and its impact on perinatal and neonatal outcomes. As a part of the research project, he assists in reviewing financial data to identify the ownership structure of different hospitals and health clinics. He examines the association of PE hospital ownership and their buyouts with disparities across patients and hospitals. Additionally, he works closely with health policy experts, interacts with healthcare workers, and uses various data science techniques and methodologies for data collection and analysis.