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, catalyzing 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. Based on a 60 Minutes report, our work triggered a Global Witness investigation and helped catalyze bipartisan beneficial ownership legislation signed into U.S. law.

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 more than two dozen 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 found that digital aid delivery dramatically reduced leakage and improved targeting — results that WFP scaled to over 100,000 households.
Details

Published in Management Science (2025). Results were scaled by the World Food Programme to 100,000+ households across Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ongoing work examines digital delivery mechanisms in 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