Atharva Tyagi

University of Chicago

Booth School of Business

Research Assistant Under Dr Vivek Nandur

Overview

At the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, I worked under Dr. Vivek Nandur on an interdisciplinary research project connecting economics, microbiology, and public health. Our goal was to understand how industrialization and pasteurization changed the biological and social effects of alcohol. We studied whether the sterilization of traditionally fermented beverages, which once contained beneficial microbes and bioactive compounds, removed protective health properties and contributed to new disease patterns.

The Economics of Fermentation: Reconstructing the Health Impacts of Traditional vs. Industrial Alcohol (1890–1942)

Research Focus

The project examines how traditional alcoholic drinks such as makgeolli and pulque differed from modern, industrial alcohol in their effects on population health. Using digitized public health data from colonial-era Korea (1890–1942), we tested whether the spread of sterilization practices coincided with measurable increases in gastrointestinal and metabolic disease.

My Contributions

  • Applied difference-in-differences econometric models to measure causal relationships between sterilization policy and disease incidence.
  • Extracted and translated more than 500 pages of historical medical and economic records written in classical Chinese, Japanese, and Hangul.
  • Integrated historical epidemiology with modern causal inference frameworks to ensure both biological and statistical accuracy.
  • Bridged insights from molecular biology with econometric analysis to refine the project’s hypotheses.

Outcomes & Impact

  • Found early evidence suggesting that the industrial sterilization of alcohol coincided with rising rates of metabolic and digestive disease.
  • Helped shape a forthcoming manuscript that reframes alcohol toxicity as partly a result of microbiome disruption.
  • Contributed to the expansion of the project into a broader cross-country comparison study

Reflection

Working at Chicago changed how I think about the connection between biology and policy. I saw that health outcomes depend not only on molecules but also on markets and manufacturing. Learning econometrics in a setting that values rigor and curiosity taught me to use data to uncover hidden links between science and society. This experience strengthened my commitment to uniting molecular research with economic understanding to improve public health at scale.