Research

Nutrition is an interdisciplinary field that uses a wide range of theoretical and empirical approaches. I use epidemiological and economics methods and focus primarily on child anthropometry and dietary quality as outcomes. I also examine data quality for nutrition and health data, and explore how data quality may affect inference. The goals of my research are to encourage collaborations and promote understanding between the fields of nutrition science and nutrition economics and to improve causal inference in nutrition by describing data errors, investigating data quality, and correcting artefactual patterns in nutrition data. Selected publications are linked here, with more detail in my CV and ORCID. 

N.B. Before my husband and I merged our three last names (Fischer, Nardi, Darrouzet - his name came hyphenated already!), our last name was Darrouzet-Nardi. There is another A. Darrouzet-Nardi, who is my brother-in-law, a biogeochemist at the University of Texas - El Paso.

Data quality and data linkages

2025. Seidler, V., Utazi, C.E., Finaret, A.B., Luckeneder, S., Zens, G., Bondarenko, M., Smith, A.*, Bradley, S., Tatem, A.J., and Webb, P. Subnational Variations in the Quality of Population Health Data: A Geospatial Analysis of Household Surveys in Africa. Forthcoming in Nature Communications.

2024. Chenarides, L., Hanks, A.S., Finaret, A.B., Davis, G., Carlson, A. An Outlook on Evidence-Based Policymaking. Choices Magazine (Principal Outreach Vehicle of the AAEA). Vol 39, Quarter 1.

2022. Finaret, A.B. An editorial. Advancing nutritional epidemiology by linking datasets and addressing data quality. The Journal of Nutrition. 152(7): 1595-1596.

2019. Finaret, A.B. and Masters, W.A. Correcting for artifactual correlation between misreported month of birth and attained height-for-age reduces but does not eliminate measured vulnerability to season of birth in poorer countries. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 109(7): 485-497. [open access]. 

2018. Finaret, A.B. and Hutchinson, M.* Missingness of Height Data from the Demographic and Health Surveys in Africa between 1991 and 2016 Was Not Random but Is Unlikely to Have Major Implications for Biases in Estimating Stunting Prevalence or the Determinants of Child Height. Journal of Nutrition, 148(5):781-789. 

Making connections between nutrition science and nutrition economics

2022. Masters, W.A., Finaret, A.B, S.A. Block. The multiple burdens of malnutrition: Dietary transition and food system transformation in economic development. Handbook of Agricultural Economics, Eds. C. Barret and D. Just. 

2019. Finaret, A.B. and Masters, W.A. Beyond calories: The new economics of nutrition Annual Review of Resource Economics, Vol. 11: 237-259. 

Child anthropometry and dietary quality

2023. Alemu, R. Masters, W.A., Finaret, A.B. Sibling rivalry between twins in utero and childhood: Evidence from birthweight and survival of 95,919 twin pairs in 72 low- and middle-income countries. American Journal of Human Biology, 35(11). [open access]. 

2021. Kirschner, S. and Finaret, A.B. Conflict and health: Building on the role of infrastructure. World Development, 146(105570). 

2020. Finaret, A.B. and Masters, W.A. Can shorter mothers have taller children? Nutritional mobility, health equity, and the intergenerational transmission of relative height. Economics and Human Biology, 39(100928). 

2018. Finaret, A.B., Miller, L.C., Joshi, N., Mahato, S., Lohani, M., Drozdowsky, J.*, Rogers, B.L. 2018. Longitudinal analysis of the intrahousehold distribution of foods in rural Nepal: Relative variability of child dietary quality across age and sex cohorts. Food Policy 79:101-110. 

2017. Darrouzet-Nardi, A.F., Masters, W.A. Nutrition Smoothing: Can Proximity to Towns and Cities Protect Rural Children against Seasonal Variation in Agroclimatic Conditions at Birth? PloS ONE. 12(1). [open access]. 

2017. Darrouzet-Nardi, A.F. Nonviolent civil insecurity is negatively associated with subsequent height-for-age in children aged< 5 y born between 1998 and 2014 in rural areas of Africa. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 105(2):485-493. 

2016. Darrouzet-Nardi, A.F., Miller, L.C., Joshi, N., Mahato, S., Lohani, M. and Rogers, B.L. Child dietary quality in rural Nepal: Effectiveness of a community-level development intervention. Food Policy. 61:185-197.

Pedagogy

2025. Finaret, A.B. and Masters, W.A. Food economics: Teaching for the future of agriculture, nutrition, and health. Selected Paper prepared for the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association at ASSA Annual Meeting 2025. Available here on AEA. 

2023. Eckstein, L., Finaret, A.B., Whitenack, L. Teaching the Inevitable: Embracing a Pedagogy of Failure. Teaching and Learning Inquiry, Vol. 11.