Raji Jayaraman's research in development and labor economics examines the role of incentives and social preferences on the decisions and performance of students, workers, and consumers. She has examined the effect of incentive pay on worker productivity; school feeding programs on student outcomes; defaults on charitable donations; and immigration on employment. In collaboration with theorists, she has also worked on the identification of peer effects in social interactions models. These papers have been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Development Economics.

Jayaraman received a B.A. in Economics and Finance from McGill University in 1993, an M.A. in International and Development Economics from Yale University in 1995, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University in 2001.