I work on the economic implications of machine intelligence, particularly in low-income countries.

I am Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs (without tenure) at Columbia University. I lead the Columbia AI and Development Initiative, and am a non-resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development, an affiliate of BREAD and J-PAL, and a member of the Data Science Institute. I have a PhD in economics from Harvard University.

In San Francisco through summer 2027.
My contact is dan[@]bjorkegren[.]com.



Selected writing:
AI is transforming the economy. Understanding its impact requires both data and imagination
Nature (2025)
Artificial Intelligence for the Poor
Foreign Affairs (2023)
Media: The Economist, BBC World Service
Could AI Leapfrog the Web? Evidence from Teachers in Sierra Leone
with Jun Ho Choi, Divya Budihal, Dominic Sobhani, Oliver Garrod, and Paul Atherton
Accepted, PNAS Nexus.
Media: The Economist, Development Impact
Manipulation-Robust Prediction
with Joshua Blumenstock and Samsun Knight
American Economic Review (2026)
What Do Policies Value?
with Joshua Blumenstock and Samsun Knight
Review of Economic Studies (2026)
Public and Private Transit: Evidence from Lagos
with Alice Duhaut, Geetika Nagpal, and Nick Tsivanidis
Revision requested (second round), American Economic Review
Causal Inference from Hypothetical Evaluations
with B. Douglas Bernheim, Jeffrey Naecker, and Michael Pollmann
Revision requested, Journal of Political Economy
The Adoption of Network Goods: Evidence from the Spread of Mobile Phones in Rwanda
Review of Economic Studies (2019)
Behavior Revealed in Mobile Phone Usage Predicts Credit Repayment
with Darrell Grissen
World Bank Economic Review (2020)