Veeshan Rayamajhee is an Assistant Professor of Economics at New Mexico State University’s Department of Economics, Applied Statistics, and International Business. Before joining NMSU in 2024, he was on the faculty at North Dakota State University, where he was also an affiliated scholar at the Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth.
His research addresses applied questions in development economics and political economy, spanning the political economy of disasters and climate change, governance of externalities, and the long-run consequences of institutional disruption. What connects them is a core argument: complex collective problems require polycentric, locally grounded governance arrangements rather than centralized, uniform solutions.
His published work has examined post-earthquake recovery in Nepal, pandemic governance, hurricane-driven institutional change in Louisiana, global fisheries commons, plastic pollution governance, and the health and behavioral effects of marijuana legalization. His methodological approach is eclectic, drawing on modern causal inference methods, fieldwork, comparative case studies, and analytical narratives, matched to the question at hand. He publishes across development economics, institutional economics, health economics, and environmental economics. His work has appeared in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Health Economics, Journal of Institutional Economics, Marine Policy, Public Choice, and elsewhere.
His current research examines how legal reforms, commons disruptions, and nationalizations from the past shape present-day economic and social outcomes in Nepal and South Asia.
He has been a James Buchanan Fellow at the Mercatus Center (2024–2025), an Adam Smith Fellow at Mercatus (2017–2019), and a Public Choice and Public Policy Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. In 2025 he received the Patricia Christmore Faculty Teaching Award, NMSU’s university-level teaching honor.
He teaches courses on economic development, Asian economies, and Latin American economies.
He lives in Las Cruces with his wife Stephanie and their son Boden. He hikes and bikes the mountains of Southern New Mexico when he can.
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