Paper accepted at Journal of Political Economy
A paper by Joshua Blumenstock, Oeindrila Dube, and Michael Callen was recently accepted at the Journal of Political Economy. Measuring Religion from Behavior: Violence, Economic Shocks and Religious Adherence in Afghanistan – joint with Oeindrila Dube and Michael Callen (Accepted, Journal of... Read More →
We’re recruiting a postdoc!
Know anyone with strong econ/CS skills who is interested in working on pressing, real-world problems? We’re recruiting a postoc to spend two years at UC Berkeley, working 50/50 on solo/joint projects. We seek applicants pursuing a research agenda at the... Read More →
Blumenstock co-chairs new initiative to test and scale AI innovations to fight poverty
The age of AI has brought wide-ranging optimism and skepticism about its effects on society. To realize AI’s full potential, Project AI Evidence (PAIE) will identify which AI solutions work and for whom, and scale only the most effective, inclusive,... Read More →
A bold calculation: What would it cost to end extreme poverty worldwide?
Read the full article here Using detailed surveys and machine learning computation, new research co-authored at UC Berkeley’s Center for Effective Global Action finds that eradicating extreme poverty would be surprisingly affordable. Joshua Blumenstock has spent much of his career... Read More →
Paper published in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
Abstract: We provide empirical evidence on how insecurity affects firm behavior by linking data on deadly terrorist attacks in Afghanistan to geolocated data on corporate mobile phone activity. We first develop an approach to estimate the geographic footprint of firms... Read More →
Paper presented at ASSA Annual Meeting
A research paper by lab PhD student Merritt Smith, lab alumnus Emily Aiken, lab director Joshua Blumenstock, and Sveta Milusheva (World Bank), was presented at this year’s ASSA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. Abstract: We provide systematic evidence on the potential... Read More →
GOL featured in Forbes magazine
Forget BLS. Here’s How To Take The Economy’s Temperature Without Using Government Data Read the full article here …Joshua Blumenstock, the Director of the Global Opportunity Lab and the co-Director of the Center for Effective Global Action at the University... Read More →
Feature article on GOL’s collaboration with Togo
Togo and UC Berkeley: A data science alliance to build a dynamic West African nation Forged in the crisis of COVID, a relationship between the small but innovative country and the Center for Effective Global Action has blossomed into a... Read More →
VoxDev article published
Our article was published on VoxDev, titled, “Measuring poverty using mobile phone data: Implications for targeting and impact evaluation.” Lead: In settings where reliable data on poverty is difficult to come by, non-traditional data sources such as mobile phone metadata... Read More →
Article on GOL’s Humanitarian work in Bangladesh
In Bangladesh, AI targeted aid faster, cheaper, and often more accurately than manual methods. Read the full article here: https://www.givedirectly.org/ai-targeting-bangladesh/