Lunch & Learn with Paul Niehaus

About the speaker:

Paul Niehaus is an associate professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego where he works with governments in emerging markets to improve the implementation of social programs. He is the co-founder and president of GiveDirectly, a nonprofit that gives unconditional cash transfers to individuals in extreme poverty, and the co-founder of Segovia Technology Co, which enables companies to make secure payments to low-income recipients in many African countries. Niehaus is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a junior affiliate at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development. He is also an affiliate of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab and the Center for Effective Global Action. Prior to his current fellowships, Niehaus was awarded fellowships by Harvard University, the National Science Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He was also a visiting researcher at Microsoft Research Lab -- New England.

Niehaus’ writing has been published in the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review, the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and Foreign Affairs. In 2013, Foreign Policy named him one of its 100 Leading Global Thinkers. Niehaus received a BS in applied mathematics in 2004 and a PhD in economics in 2009, both from Harvard University.