I work on machine learning and digital data, applied in developing economies.

Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Head of AI and Development initiative at CDEP.
Affiliate of BREAD and J-PAL.

Curriculum Vitae | Research Statement
dan[@]bjorkegren[.]com   Office: IAB 1401B   Office Hours    


Machine Learning
What Do Policies Value?
with Samsun Knight and Joshua Blumenstock
Revision requested, Review of Economic Studies. Presented at ACM EAAMO (2021)
Training Machine Learning to Anticipate Manipulation
with Joshua Blumenstock and Samsun Knight
Reject and resubmit, American Economic Review. Video (30m) | How do you say algorithm in Kiswahili?
Causal Inference from Hypothetical Evaluations
with B. Douglas Bernheim, Jeffrey Naecker, and Michael Pollmann
Video (2m) | R package
Are LLMs Useful in the Poorest Schools? theTeacherAI in Sierra Leone
with Jun Ho Choi, Oliver Garrod, Paul Atherton, Andrew Joyce-Gibbons, and Miriam Mason-Sesay
NeurIPS Workshop on Generative AI for Education (2023)
Balancing Competing Objectives with Noisy Data: Score-Based Classifiers for Welfare-Aware Machine Learning
with Esther Rolf, Max Simchowitz, Sarah Dean, Lydia Liu, Moritz Hardt, and Joshua Blumenstock
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) (2020)
Workshop paper presented at NeurIPS Joint Workshop on AI for Social Good (2019). Best Paper Award
Artificial Intelligence for the Poor
Foreign Affairs (2023), website
Media: BBC
Technology for Development
with Joshua Blumenstock
IMF Finance & Development (2023) Issue on AI
Network Industries
The Adoption of Network Goods: Evidence from the Spread of Mobile Phones in Rwanda
Review of Economic Studies (2019) Slides | Supplemental Appendix
Competition in Network Industries: Evidence from the Rwandan Mobile Phone Network
RAND Journal of Economics (2022) Slides | Supplemental Appendix
Network Adoption Subsidies: A Digital Evaluation of a Rural Mobile Phone Program in Rwanda
with Burak Ceyhun Karaca
Journal of Development Economics (2022)
To Regulate Network-Based Platforms, Look at Their Data
with Chiara Farronato
Harvard Business Review (2021), website
Digital Credit
Behavior Revealed in Mobile Phone Usage Predicts Credit Repayment
with Darrell Grissen
World Bank Economic Review (2020) Original Proposal (posted 2010)
Media (2015): NPR Morning Edition, The World Bank (syndicated to World Economic Forum), New Scientist, Radio New Zealand
The Potential of Digital Credit to Bank the Poor
with Darrell Grissen
American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings (2018)
Instant Loans Can Lift Subjective Well-Being: A Randomized Evaluation of Digital Credit in Nigeria
with Joshua Blumenstock, Omowunmi Folajimi-Senjobi, Jacqueline Mauro, and Suraj Nair
Pre-Analysis Plan
Nonparametric Causal Estimators for Multivariate Missing Data: An Application to Estimate Treatment Effects from Digital Trace Data
with Joshua Blumenstock and Jacqueline Mauro
Big Data for Development
Assessing Bias in Smartphone Mobility Estimates in Low Income Countries
with Sveta Milusheva and Leonardo Viotti
ACM Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS) (2021) Blog Post
Measuring Informal Work with Digital Traces: Mobile Payphone Operators in Rwanda
International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) (2020)
In Progress
Welfare-Sensitive Machine Learning
with Joshua Blumenstock
Efficiency of Informal Transit Networks
with Alice Duhaut, Geetika Nagpal, and Nick Tsivanidis
Does Public Transit Crowd Out Informal Transit? Evidence from Lagos
with Alice Duhaut, Geetika Nagpal, and Nick Tsivanidis
How Do Individuals Learn
with Aislinn Bohren and Patrick Vu
Other Papers
Nostalgic Demand
Inferring Missing Cell Tower Locations using Call Handoffs (2014)
Products
Microsoft Pictures App for Microsoft's first smartphones (2001)