About

Jeffrey D. Michler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural & Applied Economics at the University of Arizona. His primary research focuses on the application of contract theory and models of industrial organization to problems of agricultural risk management and rural development. His work investigates how agricultural households manage risk to achieve sustainable development and food security, and he explores the use of contracts in agriculture, as well as the impact of new technology on household welfare and health outcomes. Michler co-directs the Applied International Development Economics (AIDE) Lab and has authored a book titled 'Research Ethics in Applied Economics: A Practical Guide.' His research aims to provide policy-relevant insights into agricultural management practices in uncertain environments.

Research topics

• Economics
• Economic growth
• Geography
• Environmental health
• Computer Science
• Socioeconomics
• Medicine
• Business
• Demographic economics
• Microeconomics
• Agricultural economics
• Development economics
• Engineering
• Agricultural engineering

Selected publications

• Replication package for: Comment on Suri (2011) "Selection and Comparative Advantage in Technology Adoption"

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-04-10

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  Replication package (using synthetic data) for Comment on Suri (2011) "Selection and Comparative Advantage in Technology Adoption" by Emilia Tjernström, Dalia Ghanem, Aleksandr Michuda, Oscar Barriga-Cabanillas, Travis J. Lybbert, and Jeffrey D. Michler.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication package for: Comment on Suri (2011) "Selection and Comparative Advantage in Technology Adoption"

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-04-10

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  Replication package (using synthetic data) for Comment on Suri (2011) "Selection and Comparative Advantage in Technology Adoption" by Emilia Tjernström, Dalia Ghanem, Aleksandr Michuda, Oscar Barriga-Cabanillas, Travis J. Lybbert, and Jeffrey D. Michler.

  PublisherDOI

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

  Journal of Development Economics · 2025-09-30

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Integrating Weather and Land Cover Data into Geospatial Impact Evaluations

  ArXiv.org · 2025-09-25

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  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

• Food without fire: Environmental and nutritional impacts from a solar stove field experiment

  American Journal of Agricultural Economics · 2025-11-05 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Over 80% of the population in rural Sub‐Saharan Africa relies on biomass cooking fuel, a substantial source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. We use a field experiment in Zambia to investigate the impact of solar stoves on biomass fuel use and cooking habits. Participants kept detailed food diaries, recording every ingredient and fuel source used in preparing every dish in every meal every day during the experiment. This produces data on 93,000 ingredients used to prepare 30,000 dishes. Treated households significantly reduce biomass fuel use, cutting emissions by 3–7%, but do not significantly change cooking habits.

  PublisherDOI

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

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

  article
  PublisherDOI

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

  Food Policy · 2025-02-01 · 2 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

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

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

  bookOpen accessSenior author

  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

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

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-09-11

  preprintOpen access

  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

Frequent coauthors

• Anna Josephson

  42 shared

• Talip Kilic

  12 shared

• Aminou Arouna

  10 shared

• Gerald Shively

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  9 shared

• Natalia Estrada-Carmona

  CGIAR

  8 shared

• Emilia Tjernström

  7 shared

• Siobhan Murray

  6 shared

• Kazuki Saito

  6 shared

Education

• PhD, Agricultural Economics

  Purdue University

  2015

• M.A., Economics

  New School for Social Research

  2009

• M.A., Theology

  Saint Vladimirs Orthodox Theological Seminary

  2007

• B.A., Economics, History

  Bethel University

  2003

Awards & honors

• 2025 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA), Be…
• 2025 American Journal of Agricultural Economics Reviewer Awa…
• 2023 AAEA International Section Best Publication Award - Hon…
• 2022 AAEA, Quality of Research Discovery Award
• 2022 AAEA, Best Master's Thesis Award (advisor, awarded to E…