Duncan Thomas

About

Duncan Thomas is the Norb F. Schaefer Distinguished Professor of International Studies in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University. He holds multiple faculty positions including Professor of Economics and Professor of Public Policy Studies. Additionally, he is a Faculty Research Scholar of Duke's Population Research Center and the Center for Population Health & Aging. He is an associate of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, an affiliate of the Duke Global Health Institute, and an affiliate of the Duke Center for International Development. His office is located at 314 Social Sciences Building, Durham, NC, and he can be contacted at (919) 613-7401.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Medicine
• Demography
• Psychiatry
• Psychology
• Environmental health
• Geography
• Internal medicine
• Economics
• Economic growth

Selected publications

• Impact of Violent Crime on Risk Aversion: Evidence from the Mexican Drug War

  The Review of Economics and Statistics · 2018-11-02 · 117 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Whereas attitudes toward risk play an important role in many decisions over the life course, factors that affect those attitudes are not fully understood. Using longitudinal survey data collected in Mexico before and during the Mexican war on drugs, we investigate how risk attitudes change with variation in insecurity and uncertainty brought on by unprecedented changes in local-area violent crime. Exploiting the fact that the timing, virulence, and spatial distribution of changes in vio…

  PublisherDOI

• Effects of a natural disaster on mortality risks over the longer term

  Nature Sustainability · 2020 · 39 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Decision-Making in Complex Households

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2019-11-01 · 23 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  Extremely rich data on farm households in Burkina Faso are used to test whether resource are allocated Pareto efficiently. The complexity of household structures, including multi-generation and polygynous households, is taken into account to developing tests from theoretical models of behavior. Credible measures of bargaining power are constructed exploiting the fact that individuals within a household have well-defined property rights over the plots they own. Using data on consumption choices,…

  PublisherDOI

• Prevalence, severity and distribution of depression and anxiety symptoms using observational data collected before and nine months into the COVID-19 pandemic

  The Lancet Regional Health - Americas · 2021 · 14 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by substantial increases in adverse mental health, particularly among the young. However, it remains unclear to what extent increases in population scores on mental health assessments are due to changes in prevalence, rather than severity of symptoms. Further, it is not obvious that widely used assessments of aggregate symptoms retain their typical interpretation during an event that directly disrupts behavior. METHODS: Pre-pandemic data on…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Exposure to the Indian Ocean Tsunami shapes the HPA-axis resulting in HPA “burnout” 14 years later

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2023-10-16 · 11 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Despite significant research on the effects of stress on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, questions remain regarding long-term impacts of large-scale stressors. Leveraging data on exposure to an unanticipated major natural disaster, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, we provide causal evidence of its imprint on hair cortisol levels fourteen years later. Data are drawn from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery, a population-representative longitudinal study of tsunami survivo…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01AG030668

  NIH · $2.3M · 2014

• NIH Grant P01HD028372

  NIH · $11.8M · 2005

• NIH Grant R01AG031266

  NIH · $4.8M · 2020

Frequent coauthors

• Elizabeth Frankenberg

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  109 shared

• John S. Strauss

  Island Health

  36 shared

• Cecep Sumantri

  26 shared

• Janet Currie

  Princeton University

  25 shared

• Wayan Suriastini

  21 shared

• Bondan Sikoki

  18 shared

• Jed Friedman

  17 shared

• Daniel LaFave

  15 shared

Similar researchers at Duke University

• Anirudh Krishnah-38
• Edmund Maleskyh-34
• Kyle Beardsleyh-30