Bio

I am a development economist, teaching at the University of San Francisco as a professor since finishing my doctorate in 1996 at the University of California at Berkeley.  In July 2019 I became involved in establishing a new institute for poverty and development studies centered at the historical Clunie House mansion and the San Francisco campus of Westmont College.  I am also an affiliated researcher at the Kellogg Institute of International Studies at the University of Notre Dame and the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) at UC Berkeley. My research interests lie in the use of econometric, experimental, and game-theoretic tools to analyze the impact of development programs, especially in the areas of credit, education, and health. 

I am a regular writer for Christianity Today, and try to be a semi-regular contributor to op-ed columns for San Francisco Bay Area newspapers. My most recent book, Shrewd Samaritan: Faith, Economics, and the Road to Loving Our Global Neighbor is published by by Thomas Nelson, an imprint of HarperCollins, and is a non-fiction book for a popular audience about how ordinary people can meaningfully and effectively engage with global poverty.  I also have written a fiction book, a novel, The Taste of Many Mountains, about a group of graduate students investigating fair trade coffee in Guatemala, also published by Thomas Nelson. My first book, an academic book, Games In Economic Development is published by Cambridge University Press.

I serve as one of the co-leaders of Mayan Partners, a small faith-based non-profit organization working in the western highlands of Guatemala, and as faculty advisor for the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at USF.  I live in Berkeley with my wonderful wife Leanne and our two young daughters, Allie and Kayla.  On my last sabbatical in 2015 we lived in Oaxaca, Mexico, where I was writing and doing field research with a randomized controlled trial exploring the role of hope and aspirations in the effectiveness of microfinance.