Jaime Polanco-Jimenez
🚀 Job Market 2025/2026 | Development Economics, Economics of Education, Natural Resource Economics | Data Science Enthusiast

About Me
I am Jaime Polanco-Jiménez, a PhD student in Economics at Leuven Economics of Education Research; Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and the Department of Economics at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. My research bridges development and Economics of Education to address critical challenges in human capital accumulation. I am particularly interested in exploring how technology, gender dynamics, and resource allocation influence educational outcomes.
Job Market Paper
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: Evidence on Student Engagement from the Classroom
This paper investigates how the design of an AI educational technology affects student outcomes. Using a large-scale randomized trial with 2,440 secondary students in Belgium, I find that the design of AI chatbots has a powerful, non-monotonic effect on student engagement. A chatbot tailored to the local curriculum increased module completion by 10 percentage points, while a generic chatbot decreased it by 5 percentage points relative to traditional instruction. This effect on engagement is the primary mechanism driving learning: offering the tailored chatbot produces robust gains in knowledge, particularly for students on the margin of engagement. The results show that deep curricular integration is essential for solving the first-order challenge of student engagement in educational technology.
View Paper (PDF)Research Highlights
My doctoral research delves into the following key areas:
- AI-Powered Learning Support: Investigating how AI can mitigate teacher shortages and enhance student learning outcomes, particularly in resource-constrained environments.
- Gender Composition Effects: Analyzing the impact of gender ratios in educational settings on student performance and gender equity.
- Infrastructure Interventions: Evaluating the effectiveness of infrastructure improvements on educational access and quality.
- Natural Resource Impacts: Examining the influence of the oil industry on educational outcomes and human capital development in resource-rich regions.
I am fortunate to be advised by Professor Gloria Bernal and Professor Kristof De Witte, whose expertise has been instrumental in shaping my research agenda.
AI Paper Analyzer
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News
Nov 22, 2023 | I am going to present at The International Economic Association (IEA) World Congres 2023 the paper: Road to the Future: Identifying Impacts of Roads on Education in Colombia |
Sep 10, 2023 | I will start a visiting scholar at KUL university under the supervision of Professor Kristof De Witte |
Dec 3, 2022 | Presented at the V Colloquium of doctoral students in economics, in Cali, Colombia. |
Aug 1, 2020 | Started PhD in economics at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia. |
Jul 20, 2020 | Second master degree is done! Economics in Izhevsk, Russia. |
Feb 10, 2020 | Started working as senior Data scientist at Servinformacion |
Sep 1, 2017 | Started Oil and Gas engineering master program in Izhevsk, Russia. |