Policy Engagement

My policy-facing work examines how interventions shape conflict, development, and governance outcomes. I work across the research-to-reform pipeline: from original field experiments and impact evaluations to direct engagement with governments, international organizations, and legislatures.

Illicit Financial Flows
Exposing the shell company loophole — and closing it
Field experiments across 182 countries showed that anonymous incorporation remains dangerously easy, contributing to bipartisan U.S. legislation and reforms in the UK and British Virgin Islands.
Details

Global Shell Games — A coordinated audit study soliciting 7,400+ shell company registrations exposed compliance failures across jurisdictions. The findings ran alongside a 60 Minutes report and a Global Witness investigation, and entered the congressional record behind the bipartisan beneficial ownership legislation signed into U.S. law. In August 2026 Treasury ended beneficial-ownership reporting for U.S. companies and persons, which reopens the question the research asked rather than settling it.

Banking Bad — A follow-on global field experiment on risk, reward, and regulatory compliance. Policy work includes contracts with UN FACTI, World Bank StAR, the Central Bank of the Bahamas, and the Inter-American Development Bank.

Economist 60 Minutes Monkey Cage TED New York Times NPR Planet Money Economist ×3 Book site Policy report
Impact Evaluation
Rigorous evaluation across 52 countries
As co-founder and president of Evaluasi, I lead impact evaluations for governments, multilaterals, and NGOs — helping organizations know whether their programs actually work.
Details

I have carried out scores of impact evaluations spanning conflict, development, governance, and humanitarian response. Evaluasi clients have included USAID, the World Bank, and multiple bilateral donors. Details and reports available on request.

I also co-authored a retrospective on USAID DRG's use of impact evaluation: full report · 2-pager.

Evaluasi.io
Digital Aid & Humanitarian Response
Digital cash transfers can reach crisis-affected households more efficiently
A field experiment in Afghanistan delivered aid at under seven cents per dollar with no evidence of diversion — findings the World Food Programme is now scaling to more than 200,000 households.
Details

Published in Management Science (2025): 2,409 female-headed households, 99.75% of them able to use the payments, at a delivery cost of 6.7 cents per dollar against a WFP global benchmark of 17. The World Food Programme is using the findings to scale digital payments in Afghanistan, in partnership with HesabPay. Ongoing work examines digital delivery in Pakistan and other conflict-affected settings.

Paper PDF
Peacebuilding
Systematic evidence on what peacebuilding programs actually accomplish
Impact evaluations and data infrastructure for the UN Peacebuilding Fund, combined with the PeaDa dataset, offer some of the most rigorous evidence available on peacebuilding effectiveness.
Details

Impact Evaluation of the UN Peacebuilding Fund's Operations in Burundi. Technology and peacebuilding white paper for the Build Peace 2014 Conference. The PeaDa dataset (with Cowser and Sexton) provides systematic data on peacebuilding interventions and outcomes.

Geocoding & Aid Mapping
Mapping where aid goes — and whether location matters
I helped pioneer sub-national geocoding of development finance, enabling research and policy on aid allocation, coordination, and effectiveness that was previously impossible.
Details

I initiated and continue to work on mapping critical political and economic phenomena through AidData, the International Aid Transparency Initiative, World Bank, African Development Bank, and Malawi Government/CCAPS. AidData was subsequently awarded a $25 million USAID grant to expand this work.

Academic–Policy Collaboration
Data4Peace: bridging researchers and practitioners through hackathons
A new model for translating academic knowledge into policy-ready insights, bringing together researchers, government officials, and civil society around specific policy problems.
Details

I pioneered this approach to bridge academic work with the public and private sector. See the report from our hackathon on the peace process in Colombia.

Selected Policy Audiences

I have presented research to the following organizations, among others:

Behavioural Insights Team Wolfsberg Group U.K. FCDO U.K. Ministry of Defence U.S. State Department USAID Geo-center USAID Office of Transition Initiatives Global Financial Integrity UN Peacebuilding Fund UNDP World Bank South by Southwest Eco Development Gateway — Nairobi Development Gateway — Dakar