Andrew Hobbs
Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco
I am a development and environmental economist studying how people cope with droughts, floods, and other environmental shocks. I am particularly interested in how household power structures lead the costs of those shocks to be unevenly distributed. Much of my research relies on linking satellite data with ground-based survey datasets to study how droughts affect people, their crops, and natural landscapes.
Before starting my PhD, I lived and worked for several years in Mozambique studying climate smart agriculture. Prior to that, I worked on renewable energy and energy efficiency policy in the U.S., Germany, and China.
Selected Publications
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- Refractive Error Correction and Harvest Worker Productivity in the Guatemalan Coffee Sector: A Quasi-experimental AnalysisGlobal Public Health, 2026
- Insuring those who bear the risk: The impact of gender-inclusive framing on insurance uptake in KenyaWorld Development, 2026
- Get in the Zone: The Risk-Adjusted Welfare Effects of Data-Driven vs. Administrative Borders for Index Insurance ZonesJournal of Development Economics, 2025
- The Distribution of Energy Efficiency and Regional InequalityThe Energy Journal, 2023Awarded Campbell Watkins Paper for the best paper in The Energy Journal in 2023
- Uniting remote sensing, crop modelling and economics for agricultural risk managementNature Reviews: Earth & Environment, 2021
Research in Progress
Insuring the Family or the Asset? The Impact of Product Framing on Demand Under review
Do Droughts Drive Deforestation?: Evidence from Mozambique
Impact of Agricultural Policies on Crop Residue Burning in India with Kajal Gulati
With big data come big problems: pitfalls in measuring basis risk for crop index insurance with Matthieu Stigler, Apratim Dey, and David Lobell
Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurial Aspirations: Results from Pilot Experiments in India, Peru, and Uganda with Ester Agasha, Akash Shaji, and Bruce Wydick