Publications
As an applied microeconomist, my work involves developing programmable stochastic models that employ very high-resolution and spatiotemporal data. The emphasis on high-resolution data coupled with complex, emerging methodologies to manage very local and specific resources in a very targeted way is a common theme of my research. Broadly, my two most competitive skills are the ability to locate very quickly, very high-resolution data that then demand advanced numerical methods to answer these highly nuanced policy questions that also enjoy immediate currency in public discourse.
My research interest broadly centers on computational social sciences and natural resources. I am interested in works that require advanced analytical tools and methods to address these topics, both in a cross-section and intertemporal context. I enjoy working with interdisciplinary teams and have experience working with remote sensing data, gridded agricultural data, geospatial analysis, causal inference and machine learning in addition to regular econometric analysis, visualization and modeling.
Requests for drafts of working papers are welcome. Please feel free to email me your request.
Dissertation
My dissertation is organized around three themes. The first examines specific properties of social networks to locate opportunities to fund academic researchers strategically in order to facilitate productivity and network resilience. I use extensive econometric modeling, simulation, and machine learning to examine the productive collaborations of researchers to predict publication output. Using collaboration as the unit of analysis, the analyses determine the expected number of publications, the likelihood that new researchers enter the network through a collaboration, or if an existing researcher will exit. I compare several funding strategies and assess whether network compactness or density contributes to overall topic advancement, in particular, if the most successful strategies exhibit the properties of a small world network.
The second dissertation paper centers on improving output of a biopower process. I was able to locate hourly data on electricity prices at gins for 12 years and develop a stochastic distribution of electricity prices month by month using Bayesian methods. I conduct operations research to allocate variable gin trash volumes to jointly manage ginning and biopower together over a 9-month ginning season over 10,000 simulation years.
The final paper examines the extent to which a persistent, racial property taxation gap exists in Atlanta, GA, even after city leadership shifted to minority control. I use high-resolution demographic and sales price data, downscaling geospatial mapping to appropriate scales, to locate neighborhood characteristics of a sale, as well as individual housing characteristics and those of adjacent neighbors. All of these had to be conformed to a uniform scale to provide highly detailed individual outcomes. This reversed a prior finding using much less detailed information that African Americans were under-taxed in Atlanta.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Muriuki, J., Hudson, D. Fuad, Syed, M. March, R., Lacombe, D. 2023. “Spillover Effect of Violent Conflicts on Food Insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Food Policy, 115. DOI: 10.1177/10659129211020830
We examine violent conflict’s spillover effects on food insecurity in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Malawi. Using a contiguity matrix weighted on the distance between housing units and data from the Living Standard Measurement Survey, we find a statistically significant spillover effect of violent conflict on food security in Ethiopia and Uganda. Statistically significant indirect effects of violent conflict on food security were negative within Malawi and positive within Ethiopia. Direct and spillover effects of violent conflicts and other covariates on food security are also analyzed.
Papers in Review
Impact of Conflict on Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa. (R&R at Agriculture and Food Security, with James Muriuki and Darren Hudson)
Individual, Household, and Community Resilience and Coping Strategies to Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa. (R&R at Agrekon, with James Muriuki and Darren Hudson)
Who to Fund? Identifying Strategic Collaborations & Stimulative Policies for Dynamic Research Networks. (with Michael C. Farmer)
A Problem with Distance Variables and Alternatives for their Use. (with Michael C. Farmer, Kusum Naithani, and Donald Lacombe)
Comparative Effectiveness of Machine Learning Methods for Causal Inference. (with Syed Badruddoza and Modhurima Amin)
Profitability of a Two Product Biorefinery. (with Michael C. Farmer and Abidemi Adisa)
Working Papers
Residential Property Tax Discrimination in Atlanta, GA. (with Michael C. Farmer) (In prep)
A Fully Endogenized Finite Mixture Modeling Approach to Submarket Delineation in Atlanta, GA. (with Michael C. Farmer and Abidemi Adisa) (In prep)
Determinants of the Presence, Density, and Popularity of U.S. Food Retailers. (with Syed Badruddoza and Modhurima Amin) (In process of submission)
DACA Effect on Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from U.S. Micro-Level Data. (with Shakil Haider and Darren Hudson) (In process of submission)
Does Crime Beget Crime? A Spatial Study of Crime in U.S. Counties. (with Shakil Haider and Darren Hudson) (In proces of submission)
The Wretched Refuse? Sanctuary Policies and Crime in U.S. Counties. (with Shakil Haider and Darren Hudson) (In process of submission)
Pre-2019 Publications
Prior to my Ph.D., I worked in policy related to international development economics. My work involved collaborative and grant-specific research with multilateral organizations and international agencies including United Nations, Department for International Development (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), British Academy, Overseas Development Institute, etc. Some of my selected works include:
Bhattacharya, D., Rahman, M.R., Fuad, Syed, M. (2019). How Coherent are Trade and Investment Policies of the Southern Finance Providers? A Case Study on Indo-Bangla Lines of Credit. New York: United Nations Development Program.
Nixon, H., Menocal, A. R., Bhattacharya, D., Fuad, Syed. M., Hassan, I., … & Yusuf, S. (2018). Local governance, decentralization and corruption in Bangladesh and Nigeria. London: Overseas Development Institute (ODI)