Research

Papers Under Review

• Whom Should Anti-Piracy Enforcement Actions Target? Evidence from the MegafilmesHD Shutdown in Brazil, with Brett Danaher.
  • Under review at Information Systems Research
• The Paradox of Openness: Exposure vs. Efficiency of APIs, with Seth Benzell, Guillermo Lagarda Cuervas, and Marshall Van Alstyne.
  • Reject and resubmit, Management Science
• Digitally Distracted at the Wheel: Myopic Smartphone Use and Car Accidents, with Bree Lang and Matt Lang.
  • Under review at MIS Q
• Poverty from Space: Using High Resolution Satellite Imagery for Estimating Economic Well-being, with Ryan Engstrom and David Newhouse.
  • 2nd round revisions requested, World Bank Economic Review
  • [slides] [Press: Brookings, Bloomberg, Atlantic City Lab, Fast Company, Borgen Magazine]
• Sweet Diversity: Overseas Trade and Gains from Variety after 1492, with Hans-Joachim Voth.
  • 1st round revisions submitted, Explorations in Economic History

Publications in Peer Reviewed Journals

• (4) Open Data for Algorithms: Mapping Poverty in Belize Using Openly Available Satellite Features and Machine Learning, with Ryan Engstrom and Mike Mann. Forthcoming, Information Technology for Development
• (3) Brett Danaher, Jonathan Hersh, Michael Smith, and Rahul Telang, The Effect of Piracy Website Blocking on Consumer Behavior, (2020), MIS Quarterly
• (2) Matthew Harding and Jonathan Hersh. Big Data in Economics (2018), IZA World of Labor
• (1) Brian Bettenhausen, Eric Hanss, Jonathan Hersh, and Carlos Villarreal. Historical Health Conditions in Major US Cities: The HUE Data Set Historical Methods, (2014) 47: 67-80.

Conference Publications

• Poverty Mapping Using Convolutional Neural Networks Trained on High and Medium Resolution Satellite Images, With an Application in Mexico (with Boris Babenko, David Newhouse, Anusha Ramakrishnan, and Tom Swartz) Proceedings of the Neural Information Processing Systems 2017.
  • [conference draft] [slides]

• Engstrom, R., Newhouse, D., Haldavanekar, V., Copenhaver, A., & Hersh, J. (2017, March). Evaluating the Relationship Between Spatial and Spectral Features Derived from High Spatial Resolution Satellite Data and Urban Poverty in Colombo, Sri Lanka. In Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE), 2017 Joint (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
  

Work in Progress

• Do Managers Trust Algorithms for High Stakes Decisions? A Machine Learning Decision Support Tool for Estimating Delays in Multi Million Dollar Loans
  • First draft completed. Revising and running additional experiments
• Analyzing Conflict From Space: Identification of Physical Destruction During the Syrian Civil War with Artificial Intelligence, with Andre Groger, Andrea Matranga and Hannes Mueller [latest slides]
  • First draft completed. Revising draft for submission.
• Combining Deep Learning With Surveys to Generate Better Poverty Maps, with an application to Mexico, with Boris Babenko, David Newhouse, Anusha Ramakrishnan, and Tom Swartz [latest slides]
  • Analysis complete. Writing first draft
    

Resting Working Papers

• Unintended Consequences of the African Growth and Opportunity Act: The Role of Trade Diversion and Structural Change (with Klaus-Peter Hellwig)”
  • [draft available upon request] 

• Robust determinants of Bilateral Flows (with Marianne Baxter)
  • [latest draft] [slides]

• Building a better model: Variable selection to predict poverty in Pakistan and Sri Lanka (with Marium Afzal and David Newhouse)”
  • [latest draft]