Fall 2017 Juris Padegs Visiting Assistant in Research
Andris Saulītis is a Ph.D. candidate in Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, and his completing his doctoral thesis on how individuals in current-day Latvia are coping with overindebtedness. He holds master’s degrees from Rīga Stradiņš University and the New School for Social Research (New York City), and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Latvia.
At Yale Mr. Saulītis continued work on his thesis, focusing on quantitative research methods in analyzing the data he had collected in Latvia on intrinsic motivations of compliance and on insolvency. He also worked on issues of recovery from financial crisis, especially social mechanisms, as well as legal solutions, to help households avoid and recover from financial distress. This buttressed his work already done on understanding variations in social norms and obligation fulfillment in Latvia. He also studied overindebtedness in the United States and in European Union states as comparisons to that in Latvia.