About

Anna Josephson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Co-Director of the AIDE Lab at the University of Arizona. Her research centers on the measurement of well-being and how data, methods, and assumptions influence our understanding of this concept. She has contributed to the field through her work on the integration of remote sensing and socioeconomic survey data, privacy protection, and measurement error. Josephson co-authored the book "Research Ethics in Applied Economics: A Practical Guide" with Jeffrey Michler, which is available from Routledge and Amazon. Her recent research includes studies on impact evaluations in data-scarce environments, the use of earth observation in applied economic contexts, livelihood diversification and food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic, intra-household inequality in food expenditures and diet quality, and intra-household management of resources. Through her work, she advances the understanding of economic well-being and the ethical considerations in applied economics research.

Research topics

• Geography
• Environmental health
• Economics
• Socioeconomics
• Medicine
• Economic growth
• Sociology
• Demography
• Demographic economics
• Biology
• Development economics
• Business

Selected publications

• The Mismeasure of Weather: Using Remotely Sensed Earth Observation Data in Economic Contexts

  Washington, DC: World Bank eBooks · 2025-01-08 · 2 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  The availability of weather data from remotely sensed Earth observation data has reduced the cost of including weather variables in econometric models. Weather variables are common instrumental variables used to predict economic outcomes and serve as an input in modeling crop yields for rainfed agriculture. The use of Earth observation data in econometric applications has only recently been met with critical assessment of the suitability and quality of these data in economics. This paper quantifies the significance and magnitude of the effect of measurement error in Earth observation data in the context of smallholder agricultural productivity. The paper shows that different Earth observation sources use different measurement methods. The findings are not robust to the choice of Earth observation dataset, and the outcomes are not simply affine transformations of one another. Thus, the paper suggests that researchers should exercise caution in using these data and include robustness checks that test alternative sources of Earth observation data.

  PublisherDOI

• Coping or Hoping?: Livelihood Diversification and Food Insecurity in the COVID-19 Pandemic

  Washington, DC: World Bank eBooks · 2025-01-07

  bookOpen access

  This paper examines the impact of livelihood diversification on food insecurity amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The 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, the paper estimates the causal effect of livelihood diversification on food insecurity. The results do not support the hypothesis that livelihood diversification boosts household resilience. Although income diversification may serve as an effective coping mechanism for small-scale shocks, the findings show that for a disaster on the scale of the pandemic, this strategy is not effective. Policy makers 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.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Coping or hoping? Livelihood diversification and food insecurity in the COVID-19 pandemic

  Food Policy · 2025-02-01 · 2 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Impact evaluations in data-scarce environments: The case of stress-tolerant rice varieties in Bangladesh

  Journal of Development Economics · 2025-09-30

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Integrating Weather and Land Cover Data into Geospatial Impact Evaluations

  ArXiv.org · 2025-09-25

  preprintOpen access

  Integrating gridded weather and earth observation data into impact evaluations holds great promise. It allows researchers to capture environmental context, external shocks, and even to measure outcomes (e.g., land cover change, agricultural production) that surveys might miss due to spatial or temporal data collection constraints. However, with great power comes great responsibility: the increasing ease of extracting time series from these datasets belies potentially complex geospatial and measurement issues that can affect the magnitude, direction, as well as interpretation of impact evaluation estimates. This chapter highlights several of the most common issues while providing resources to help guide researchers to thoughtfully use (and avoid misuse) of weather, vegetation, land cover, and extreme event data in the context of geospatial impact evaluation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The mismeasure of weather: Using earth observation data for estimation of socioeconomic outcomes

  Journal of Development Economics · 2025-07-08 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Expanding Undergraduate Research Experience: Opportunities, Challenges, and Lessons for the Future

  Applied Economics Teaching Resources · 2025-04-01

  articleOpen access

  Research is a core activity at universities, but the largest group of people at most universities—the undergraduate students—frequently graduate without scientific research experience. In this case study, we highlight challenges to engage undergraduates in the research process and focus on three key issues: student interest, timing, and access. We then report on our experience of preparing and rolling-out a research internship program designed to overcome these three hurdles. We target: (1) students not interested in a career in research, (2) lower-division students with little to no classroom research experience, and (3) students who are underrepresented in economics and/or STEM based on their race/ethnicity or gender identity. We candidly discuss the benefits, costs, hurdles, constraints, and successes of the program’s first cohort and make recommendations for others interested in curating similar programs at their own institutions.

  PublisherDOI

• The Cost of Climate Action: Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Climate Information on Charitable Donations to Climate Activism

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-09-25

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  We examine the propensity of individuals to donate to climate activism, evaluating the impact of different informational treatments on an incentive compatible charitable donation and stated climate change-related concerns. Participants were evaluated on climate literacy and general climate attitudes before being randomly assigned to a treatment which provided either education or neutral language about climate change, either with or without images of protest. After the treatment, participants engaged in an incentive compatible dictator game. We find that participants gave more to climate activism than seen in previous dictator game and charitable giving experiments, in both average amount given and proportion of participants who gave their entire endowment. However, we determine that climate activism information negatively influenced the amount of money donated. We also found that protest imagery moderated this negative effect and had a positive significant effect of increasing participants' climate concern. Finally, we found that the climate concern was significantly positively correlated with donations, while being a male was significantly negatively associated with donation amounts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Mismeasure of Weather: Using Remotely Sensed Earth Observation Data in Economic Context

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-09-11

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The availability of weather data from remotely sensed Earth observation (EO) data has reduced the cost of including weather variables in econometric models. Weather variables are common instrumental variables used to predict economic outcomes and serve as an input into modelling crop yields for 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 quantify the significance and magnitude of the effect of measurement error in EO data in the context of smallholder agricultural productivity. We find that different measurement methods from different EO sources: findings are not robust to the choice of EO dataset 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.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Coping or Hoping? Livelihood Diversification and Food Insecurity in the COVID-19 Pandemic

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-09-03

  preprintOpen access

  We examine the impact of livelihood diversification on 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 the causal effect of livelihood diversification on food insecurity. Our results do not support the hypothesis that livelihood diversification boosts 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.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jeffrey D. Michler

  42 shared

• Lar̀s Olson

  Karolinska Institutet

  31 shared

• Stefan Brené

  Karolinska Institutet

  27 shared

• Alexandra Trifunovski

  20 shared

• Paula C. Bickford

  James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital

  16 shared

• Francesco Acciai

  Arizona State University

  12 shared

• Talip Kilic

  12 shared

• Christian Spenger

  Karolinska Institutet

  11 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Dept. of Agricultural Economics

  Purdue University

  2017

• M.S., Dept. of Agricultural Economics

  Purdue University

  2013

Awards & honors

• Early Career Scholar Award, University of Arizona (2023)
• Award for Excellence in Resilience Research for Global Devel…
• AAEA International Section Best Publication – Honorable Ment…
• Outstanding MSc Thesis AAEA, Advisor to Emil Kee-Tui for the…
• Uma Lele Prize for Best Paper on Gender, 30th International…