Jeff Arapoc

Featured on May 13, 2021

Hi! I’m Jeff! I’ve been teaching and doing research for a decade now, and I can say that the academe is a place I can truly call home. However, this has not always been the case when I graduated from my bachelor’s degree in economics. So for my Throwback Thursday post, I am taking a quick trip down memory lane to give you a glimpse of how my experiences led me to pursue the path of an academic in UPLB, and a PhD student at University of Newcastle.

Now to put it lightly, I am not a gifted student. There’s a higher chance that you’ll see me drinking with my friends than studying inside the library. In a university full of minds brimming with thirst for knowledge, I am a student tagged as the infamous “BS Org”, or a student with more time spent in organizations compared to the combined number of class hours attended in a week.

After grad, I took the first offer with the best salary package. I wanted a high paying job and I got it. Funny, but this was the first time that I started to miss economics. I resigned after a year of non-rewarding job routines and took a leap of faith by enrolling in the UPSE’s MA Econ program. With the money I saved and with no big plans on how to further finance my studies, you could guess I almost went bankrupt.

With no income coming in, I applied for a teaching position in UPLB and unfortunately, I was not hired. But after a week, I was informed that I have qualified for an MA scholarship. The grant required me to teach classes which I eventually enjoyed. I also joined the Institute for Development & Econometric Analysis which jumpstarted my research career. I earned little but I learned big. Truly, working with people who are better than you is always an opportunity for growth.

In my last semester of MA coursework, I received another invitation for the same teaching position in UPLB. As a believer of ‘second time is the charm’, I applied again, and the rest is history.

It’s funny how these experiences fatefully led me to a career in the academe. Something that I’d never dream of as a carefree college kid. So, for all those moments that seemed frightening to make the first step, I urge you to let passion be the green light.

Economists are often tagged as “armchair” scientists for making strong assertions about the economy even without exposure to the harsh realities on the ground. This also comes with tons of criticisms that our models and theories are often based on simplistic and unrealistic assumptions. At first, I was being defensive about it. But after immersing myself in different research activities that required a lot of fieldwork, I was taken aback by what I’ve witnessed. I finally accepted that my notion of economics is flawed.

But if you ask me, why, amid the existent complexity of economics did I even choose a topic that is intangible even to my peers?

My decision to pursue a PhD thesis on behavioral economics was inspired by my experiences as a researcher in UPLB.

I worked on 2 research projects on economic evaluation. The 1st was with DOST’s Industry Strategic Plan for several agricultural commodities; and the 2nd was on the impacts of adaptation to extreme weather events of households in Iloilo (Yolanda) and Bacoor (Habagat). Both fieldwork involved a lot of interaction with people from different walks of life, and these experiences hit me with a new perspective on the importance of public policies and their implementation on the ground. For one, not only do we struggle with resources and implementation, the real disaster strikes when the people you want to help also refuse to take part in the process. And while most policies are also designed to help, there are a lot of crucial factors that were not accounted in the equation.

It was disconcerting to finally understand that all the efforts and interventions—not to mention my personal investment on seeing the project become a success—are doomed to fail from the beginning. With these realizations, I was more than eager to revisit my views on some basic economic concepts and assumptions like incentives and rationality. I began reading books and articles written by notable academics on behavioural economics. This is how I began my BE journey. In fact, this addiction spilled-over to my thesis advisees.

Now that I am on the final semester of my PhD, I am thrilled to formally bring this amazing field to UPLB!