Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak is a Professor at Yale University with concurrent appointments in the Department of Economics and the School of Management. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, as co-chair of its Urban Services Initiative and of its Environment & Energy Sector work. He leads the Bangladesh Research Program for the International Growth Centre (IGC) at LSE. He has previously worked at the World Bank, and at the International Monetary Fund.

Mobarak is a development economist with interests in environmental issues and has several ongoing research projects in Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, India, Indonesia, Kenya and Malawi. He conducts field experiments exploring ways to induce people in developing countries to adopt technologies or behaviors that are likely to be welfare improving. His research has been published in journals across disciplines, including Econometrica, Science, The Review of Economic Studies, the American Political Science Review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Demography, and covered by the New York Times, The Economist, Science, NPR, Wired.com, the Times of London, and other media outlets around the world. He is currently collaborating with Evidence Action on a multi-country scale-up and replication of his research program that encourages rural to urban seasonal migration in the developing world to counter seasonal poverty.

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Duncan Thomas investigates the inter-relationships between health, human capital and socio-economic status with a focus on the roles that individual, family and community factors play in improving levels of health and well-being across the globe. Much of this work highlights resource allocation and decision-making within households and families, particularly in the face of large-scale unanticipated shocks. His research uses data from large-scale population based longitudinal surveys that he has designed and fielded in collaboration with Elizabeth Frankenberg and other colleagues in the U.S., Indonesia and Mexico. These include the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS), the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR) and the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS). He directs the NBER Development Economics program.

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