Jeffrey David Michler

Interests

Research

International development, industrial organization, experimental economics

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Josephson, A., & Michler, J. (2023). RESEARCH ETHICS IN APPLIED ECONOMICS. Taylor and Francis. doi:10.4324/9781003025061
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  Emphasizing the new challenges posed by the data science revolution, digital media, and changing norms, Research Ethics in Applied Economics examines the ethical issues faced by quantitative social scientists at each stage of the research process. The first section of the book considers project development, including issues of project management, selection bias in asking research questions, and political incentives in the development and funding of research ideas. The second section addresses data collection and analysis, discussing concerns about participant rights, data falsification, data management, specification search, p-hacking, and replicability. The final section focuses on sharing results with academic audiences and beyond, with an emphasis on self-plagiarism, social media, and the importance of achieving policy impact. The discussion and related recommendations highlight emergent issues in research ethics. Featuring perspectives from experienced researchers on how they address ethical issues, this book provides practical guidance to both students and experienced practitioners seeking to navigate ethical issues in their applied economics research.

Chapters

• Michler, J., & Josephson, A. (2022). Recent developments in inference: Practicalities for applied economics. In A modern guide to food economic. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. doi:10.4337/9781800372054.00019

Journals/Publications

• Josephson, A., Michler, J. D., Kilic, T., & Murray, S. (2026). The mismeasure of weather: Using earth observation data for estimation of socioeconomic outcomes. Journal of Development Economics, 178. doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103553
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  The availability of weather data from remotely sensed earth observation (EO) products has reduced the cost to economists of including weather variables in econometric models. Weather variables are common instrumental variables used to predict socioeconomic outcomes and serve as an input into modeling crop productivity in rainfed agriculture. The use of EO data in econometric applications has only recently been met with a critical assessment of the suitability and quality of this data in economics. We document variability in estimates of agricultural productivity in six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa using nine different EO data products. By varying the source of the EO data we demonstrate the magnitude and significance of measurement error. We find that estimates are not robust to the choice of EO data and outcomes are not simply affine transformations of one another. This begs caution on the part of researchers using these data and suggests that robustness checks should include testing alternative sources of EO data.
• Michler, J. D., Al Rafi, D. A., Giezendanner, J., Josephson, A., Pede, V. O., & Tellman, E. (2026). Impact evaluations in data-scarce environments: The case of stress-tolerant rice varieties in Bangladesh. Journal of Development Economics, 179. doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103648
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  New technologies are sometimes introduced at times or in places that lack the necessary data to conduct a well-identified impact evaluation. We develop a methodology that combines Earth Observation (EO) data and deep learning with administrative and survey data so as to allow researchers to conduct impact evaluations when traditional economic data is missing. To demonstrate our method, we study stress tolerant rice varieties (STRVs) first introduced to Bangladesh 15 years ago. Using EO data on rice production and flooding for the entire country, spanning two decades, we find evidence of STRV effectiveness. We highlight how the nature of the technology, which is only effective under a specific set of circumstances, creates a Goldilocks Problem that EO data is particularly well suited to addressing. Our findings speak to the promises and challenges of using EO data to conduct impact evaluations in data-scarce environments.
• Furbush, A. M., Josephson, A., Kilic, T., & Michler, J. D. (2025). Coping or hoping? Livelihood diversification and food insecurity in the COVID-19 pandemic. Food Policy, 131. doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2025.102819
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  We examine the relationship between livelihood diversification and food insecurity amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis uses household panel data from Ethiopia, Malawi, and Nigeria in which the first round was collected immediately prior to the pandemic and extends through multiple rounds of monthly data collection during the pandemic. Using this pre- and post-outbreak data, and guided by a pre-analysis plan, we estimate conditional associations between livelihood diversification and food insecurity. Our results do not support the hypothesis that livelihood diversification correlates with household resilience. Though income diversification may serve as an effective coping mechanism for small-scale shocks, we find that for a disaster on the scale of the pandemic this strategy is not effective. Policymakers looking to prepare for the increased occurrence of large-scale disasters will need to grapple with the fact that coping strategies that gave people hope in the past may fail them as they try to cope with the future.
• McCann, L. E., Michler, J. D., Mwangala, M., Olurotimi, O., & Carmona, N. E. (2025). Food without fire: Environmental and nutritional impacts from a solar stove field experiment. American Journal of Agricultural Economics. doi:10.1111/ajae.70026
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  Over 80% of the population in rural Sub-Saharan Africa relies on biomass cooking fuel, a substantial source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. We use a field experiment in Zambia to investigate the impact of solar stoves on biomass fuel use and cooking habits. Participants kept detailed food diaries, recording every ingredient and fuel source used in preparing every dish in every meal every day during the experiment. This produces data on 93,000 ingredients used to prepare 30,000 dishes. Treated households significantly reduce biomass fuel use, cutting emissions by 3–7%, but do not significantly change cooking habits.
• Michler, J., Josephson, A., Kilic, T., & Murray, S. (2022). Privacy protection, measurement error, and the integration of remote sensing and socioeconomic survey data. Journal of Development Economics, 158(Issue). doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.102927
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  When publishing socioeconomic survey data, survey programs implement a variety of statistical methods designed to preserve privacy but which come at the cost of distorting the data. We explore the extent to which spatial anonymization methods to preserve privacy in the large-scale surveys supported by the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) introduce measurement error in econometric estimates when that survey data is integrated with remote sensing weather data. Guided by a pre-analysis plan, we produce 90 linked weather-household datasets that vary by the spatial anonymization method and the remote sensing weather product. By varying the data along with the econometric model we quantify the magnitude and significance of measurement error coming from the loss of accuracy that results from privacy protection measures. We find that spatial anonymization techniques currently in general use have, on average, limited to no impact on estimates of the relationship between weather and agricultural productivity. However, the degree to which spatial anonymization introduces mismeasurement is a function of which remote sensing weather product is used in the analysis. We conclude that care must be taken in choosing a remote sensing weather product when looking to integrate it with publicly available survey data.
• Rudin-Rush, L., Michler, J., Josephson, A., & Bloem, J. (2022). Food insecurity during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in four African countries. Food Policy, 111(Issue). doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2022.102306
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  We document trends in food security up to one full year after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in four African countries. Using household-level data collected by the World Bank, we highlight differences over time amid the pandemic, between rural and urban areas, and between female-headed and male-headed households within Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Nigeria. We first observe a sharp increase in food insecurity during the early months of the pandemic with a subsequent gradual decline. Next, we find that food insecurity has increased more in rural areas than in urban areas relative to pre-pandemic data within each of these countries. Finally, we do not find a systematic difference in changes in food insecurity between female-headed and male-headed households. These trends complement previous microeconomic analysis studying short-term changes in food security associated with the pandemic and existing macroeconomic projections.
• Janzen, S. A., & Michler, J. D. (2021). Ulysses' pact or Ulysses' raft: Using pre‐analysis plans in experimental and nonexperimental research. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 43(4), 1286-1304. doi:10.1002/aepp.13133
• Michler, J. D. (2018). Money Matters: The Role of Yields and Profits in Agricultural Technology Adoption. American Journal of Agricultural Economics.
• Michler, J. D. (2018). Money Matters: The Role of Yields and Profits in Agricultural Technology Adoption. SSRN Electronic Journal.
• Michler, J. D., & Josephson, A. L. (2018). Beasts in the Field? Ethics in Agricultural and Applied Economics. Food Policy, 79, 1-11.
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  Ongoing changes to research practices and recent media attention to agricultural and applied economics have raised new ethical problems, but also created opportunities for new solutions. In this paper, we discuss ethical issues facing the profession and propose potential ways in which the field can address these issues. We divide our discussion into two topics. First are ethical issues that arise during the collection, management and analysis of data. Second are ethical issues faced by researchers as they formulate, fund, and disseminate their research. We pay special attention to issues of data dredging or p-hacking and potential ethical issues arising from interaction with the media.
• Michler, J. D. (2017). The importance of the savings device in precautionary savings: Empirical evidence from rural Bangladesh. Agricultural Economics (United Kingdom).
• Michler, J. D. (2017). To Specialize or Diversify: Agricultural Diversity and Poverty Dynamics in Ethiopia. World Development.
• Michler, J. D. (2017). Welfare impacts of improved chickpea adoption: A pathway for rural development in Ethiopia?. Food Policy.
• Michler, J. D. (2015). Land Tenure, Tenure Security and Farm Efficiency: Panel Evidence from the Philippines. Journal of Agricultural Economics.

Presentations

• Masters, W., Michler, J. D., Smale, M., & Josephson, A. L. (2019, January). Ethics in Agricultural and Applied Economics. Allied Social Science Annual Meeting. Atlanta, GA: American Economic Association.
• Orr, A., Michler, J. D., & Josephson, A. L. (2018, August). An Industrious Revolution? Changes in the Household Economy of Rural Bangladesh. Agricultural and Applied Economic Association Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C.: Agricultural and Applied Economic Association.
• Orr, A., Michler, J. D., & Josephson, A. L. (2018, Fall). An Industrious Revolution? Changes in the Household Economy of Rural Bangladesh. International Rice Congress. Singapore: International Rice Research Institute, among others: http://ricecongress2018.irri.org/.
• Michler, J. D., & Josephson, A. L. (2015, Summer). “To Specialize or Diversify: Agricultural Diversity and Poverty Dynamics in Ethiopia. International Conference of Agricultural Economists Meeting. Milan, Italy: International Conference of Agricultural Economists.