Emily Breza

About

Emily L. Breza is the Frederic E. Abbe Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Her research focuses on development economics, with particular emphasis on financial markets, labor markets, and social networks. She holds a prominent role as a board member and finance co-chair of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL). Additionally, she is affiliated with several leading research organizations including the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the International Growth Centre (IGC), the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and Y-RISE. Her work contributes to understanding the dynamics of economic development through the lenses of market interactions and social structures.

Research topics

• Information Retrieval
• Computer Science
• Data Mining
• Econometrics
• Theoretical computer science
• Mathematics
• Statistics
• Nursing
• Engineering
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Comparison of Knowledge and Information-Seeking Behavior After General COVID-19 Public Health Messages and Messages Tailored for Black and Latinx Communities

  Annals of Internal Medicine · 2020 · 122 citations

  BACKGROUND: The paucity of public health messages that directly address communities of color might contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in knowledge and behavior related to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). OBJECTIVE: To determine whether physician-delivered prevention messages affect knowledge and information-seeking behavior of Black and Latinx individuals and whether this differs according to the race/ethnicity of the physician and tailored content. DESIGN: Randomized controlled tri…

  DOI

• Using Aggregated Relational Data to Feasibly Identify Network Structure without Network Data

  American Economic Review · 2020 · 107 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Social network data are often prohibitively expensive to collect, limiting empirical network research. We propose an inexpensive and feasible strategy for network elicitation using Aggregated Relational Data (ARD): responses to questions of the form "how many of your links have trait k ?" Our method uses ARD to recover parameters of a network formation model, which permits sampling from a distribution over node- or graph-level statistics. We replicate the results of two field experiments that us…

  DOI

• End COVID-19 in low- and middle-income countries

  Science · 2022-03-10 · 86 citations

  articleOpen access

  Vaccines are changing the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in grossly uneven ways. Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face considerable obstacles in both receiving and distributing doses. To limit virus transmission, its devastating impacts, and opportunities for further mutations, this must change. Until it does, nonpharmaceutical interventions such as masking must remain a priority. Science invited global experts to highlight research and innovations aimed at quickening the end of CO…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Changes in Social Network Structure in Response to Exposure to Formal Credit Markets

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2023-06-27 · 50 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract We show that the entry of formal financial institutions can have far-reaching and long-lasting impacts on informal lending and social networks more generally. We first study the introduction of microfinance in 75 villages in Karnataka, India, 43 of which were exposed to microfinance. Using difference-in-differences, we show that networks shrank more in exposed villages. Moreover, links between households that were both unlikely to borrow from microfinance were at least as likely to disa…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• When Less Is More: Experimental Evidence on Information Delivery During India’s Demonetisation

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2023-07-07 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract In disseminating information, policymakers face a choice between broadcasting to everyone and informing a small number of “seeds” who then spread the message. While broadcasting maximises the initial reach of messages, we offer theoretical and experimental evidence that it need not be the best strategy. In a field experiment during the 2016 Indian demonetisation, we delivered policy information, varying three dimensions of the delivery method at the village level: initial reach (broadca…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Relative Pay Comparisons in the Workplace: Field Evidence on Effort and Labor Supply

  NSF · $110k · 2016–2020

• RAPID: COVID-19 Information Campaigns for Vulnerable Populations

  NSF · $200k · 2020–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Arun G. Chandrasekhar

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  169 shared

• Esther Duflo

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  113 shared

• Abhijit Banerjee

  94 shared

• Benjamin Olken

  80 shared

• Marcella Alsan

  77 shared

• Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

  Yale University

  71 shared

• Abhijit Chowdhury

  Liver Foundation West Bengal

  45 shared

• Lucy Ogbu-Nwobodo

  University of California, San Francisco

  31 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  Harvard University

• B.A., Economics

  Harvard University

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Andrei Shleiferh-200
• Alberto Alesinah-161
• John Y. Campbellh-132