Aleksandr Michuda
Email: amichud1@swarthmore.edu
Website: amichuda.github.io
Github: github.com/amichuda
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/aleksandr-michuda
Professional Summary
My research combines data fusion and causal econometrics to study labor markets, health, and climate change adaptation in developing countries. I maintain active collaborations with industry platforms (Uber, SafeBoda, and Zipline) to develop and evaluate interventions that improve economic outcomes for households in low- and middle-income countries. My recent work consists of platform experiments in which rideshare drivers in Uganda are randomly offered earnings guarantees to study income effects, risk reduction, and flexibility. Another brings together the rideshare platform with an insurance consortium to provide drivers with index-based weather insurance for their rural families to buffer against agricultural income shocks. I currently have a second-round revision at Econometrica, a recently accepted paper at World Development, an R&R at the World Bank Economic Review, and additional submissions under review.
Appointments
| 2024- | Visiting Assistant Professor | Department of Economics, Swarthmore College |
| 2021-2024 | Assistant Research Professor | CDSES, Cornell University |
Education
| 2021 | Agricultural and Resource Economics, UC Davis | PhD |
| 2014 | Economics CUNY Hunter College | BA/MA |
| 2014 | Philosophy CUNY Hunter College | BA |
Publications
Bird, Samuel S., and Aleksandr Michuda. 2025. “Ethnic Diversity and Voting Behavior at Scale: Evidence from Uganda.” World Development 196: 107181.
Colina, Armando R., Stephen A. Vosti, Michael Jarvis, et al. 2025. “Cost-Effectiveness of Fortified Bouillon in Addressing Burkinabe Children’s Vitamin a Inadequacy: An Economic Optimization Model.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Tabetando, Rayner, Djomo Choumbou Raoul Fani, Catherine Ragasa, and Aleksandr Michuda. 2023. “Land Market Responses to Weather Shocks: Evidence from Rural Uganda and Kenya.” European Review of Agricultural Economics 50 (3): 954–77.
Vosti, Stephen A., Katherine P. Adams, Aleksandr Michuda, et al. 2023. “Impacts of Micronutrient Intervention Programs on Effective Coverage and Lives Saved: Modeled Evidence from Cameroon.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1519 (1): 199–210.
Gupta, Anubhab, Heng Zhu, Miki Khanh Doan, Aleksandr Michuda, and Binoy Majumder. 2021. “Economic Impacts of the COVID-19 Lockdown in a Remittance-Dependent Region.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 103 (2): 466–85.
Cabanillas, Oscar Barriga, Jeffrey D. Michler, Aleksandr Michuda, and Emilia Tjernström. 2018. “Fitting and Interpreting Correlated Random-Coefficient Models Using Stata.” Stata Journal 18 (1): 159–73.
Working Papers
Mathur, Mitali, Aleksandr Michuda, and Shotaro Nakamura. 2025. “Registered Report: Risks, Uncertainty, and Flexibility in Gig Work: Evidence via Conditional Income Guarantee Interventions in Uganda.” Unpublished manuscript. Submitted for publication.
Michuda, Aleksandr, Adriana Molina-Garzon, and Karen Ortiz-Becerra. 2025. Temperature Shocks and the Demand for Health Inputs in Ghana.
Tennant, Elizabeth J., Aleksandr Michuda, Joanna B. Upton, et al. 2025. Nowcasting Disruptions to Human Capital Formation: Evidence from High-Frequency Household and Geospatial Data in Rural Malawi. 11202. The World Bank. Revise and Resubmit, World Bank Economic Review.
Tjernström, Emilia, Dalia Ghanem, Aleksandr Michuda, Oscar Barriga Cabanillas, Travis J. Lybbert, and Jeffrey D. Michler. 2025. “A Group Random Coefficient Approach to Modeling Heterogeneous Returns to Technology Adoption.” Revise and Resubmit, Second Revision Requested, Econometrica.
Zhu, Heng, Anubhab Gupta, Miki Khanh Doan, and Aleksandr Michuda. 2025. Temporal Fluctuations and Food Security: Addressing Misclassification Errors in Cross-Sectional Data. Revise and Resubmit, Food Security.
Michuda, Aleksandr. 2024. “Rural-Urban Risk Sharing Networks: Uber Driver Labor Supply Responses to Shocks in Uganda.”
Doan, Miki Khanh, Aleksandr Michuda, Heng Zhu, Anubhab Gupta, and Binoy Majumder. 2022. “Livelihood Strategies in a Climate-Change Vulnerable Region.”
Michuda, Aleksandr, Cristina Chiarella, Oscar Barriga-Cabanillas, and Juan Sebastian Correa. 2022. “Genetic Dilution Erodes Productivity: Exploring Farmers’ Low Adoption Levels of Improved Maize in Ethiopia.”
Michuda, Aleksandr, and Michael Kevane. 2022. “Classification into Ethnic Groups in Burkina Faso Using Names and Localities.”
Works in Progress
Mitali Mathur, Aleksandr Michuda, Shotaro Nakamura. “Risks, Uncertainty, and Flexibility in Gig Work: Evidence via Conditional Income Guarantee Interventions in Uganda”
Aleksandr Michuda. “A Machine Learning Misclassification Bias-Robust Linear Model”
Aleksandr Michuda, Abhilasha Sahay, Nivedhitha Subramanian. “H-1B Policy and Women’s Labor Force Participation: A study of the Indian Marriage Market”
Isaac Ahimbisibwe and Aleksandr Michuda. “Ugandan Surname Prediction Validation”
Book Chapters and Other Publications
Michuda, A., K. Ortiz-Becerra, K. Adams, et al. 2022. “Minimod: An Open Source Python Package to Evaluate the Cost Effectiveness of Micronutrient Intervention Programs.” Current Developments in Nutrition 6 (Supplement_1): 776–76.
Michuda, Aleksandr, Rachael E. Goodhue, Mark Hoffmann, and Steven A. Fennimore. 2021. “Predicting Net Returns of Organic and Conventional Strawberry Following Soil Disinfestation with Steam or Steam Plus Additives.” Agronomy 11 (1): 149.
Carter, Michael R., and Aleksandr Michuda. 2019. “The Distribution of Productive Assets and the Economics of Rural Development and Poverty Reduction.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Development Economics. Palgrave Macmillan.
Michuda, Aleksandr, Rachael Goodhue, Karen Klonsky, et al. 2019. “The Economic Viability of Suppressive Crop Rotations for the Control of Verticillium Wilt in Organic Strawberry Production.” Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems 43 (9): 984–1008.
Michuda, Aleksandr, Rachael Goodhue, Joji Muramoto, and Carol Shennan. 2017. “Crop Rotations Can Increase Net Returns in Organic Strawberry and Vegetable Production Systems.” ARE Update 20 (6): 5–8.
Editorships
| 2023 | Special Issue Guest Editor | Harvard Data Science Review 5.3 |
| Reinforcing Reproducibility And Replicability |
Peer Review
Journal of Agricultural and Food Economics; American Journal of Agricultural Economics; Socio-Economic Planning Sciences; Food Policy; The Journal of African Economies
Teaching
| Spring 2025 | Introduction to Econometrics | Professor | Swarthmore College |
| Spring 2025 | Economics 1 | Professor | Swarthmore College |
| Fall 2024 | Economics 1 | Professor | Swarthmore College |
| Fall 2023 | Empirical Methods for Applied Economists | Instructor | Cornell University |
| Summer 2019 | Undergraduate Econometrics | Instructor | UC Davis |
| Fall 2018 | Microeconomics | TA | UC Davis |
Service
| Summer 2023 - Present | GAIN Mentor |
| Fall 2022 - Present | Mentor for STAAARS+ |
| Fall 2017 - Present | BITSS Catalyst Grant |
| 2017 | Graduate Student Association President |
Languages and Skills
English: Fluent
Russian: Fluent
Ukrainian: Conversational
Technical Skills
Python, R, Stata, GitHub, Bash, GAMS
Past Experience
| July 2023 - August 2023 | Breakthrough Tech AI | Faculty Lead Mentor | Summer 2024 - Machine Learning Foundations |
| April 2023 - Present | World Bank Corporation | Short-Term Consultant | Using Data Fusion to Improve Human Capital Indicators |
| January 2020 - July 2022 | UC Davis | Consultant | MINIMOD - Optimal Nutritional Interventions across Space and Time |
| September 2019 - December 2019 | Uber Inc. | Data Science Intern | Pricing and Demand |
| July 2016 - September 2019 | UC Davis | Research Assistant | Disease Suppressive Crop Rotations |
Conferences/Presentations
| CIDER-CRS 2024 | Nowcasting shocks to human capital |
| NEUDC 2022 | Genetic Dilution erodes productivity: Exploring farmers’ low adoption levels of improved maize in Ethiopia |
| PACDEV 2022 | Urban Labor Supply Responses to Rural Drought Shocks on Rideshare Platforms. |
| NEUDC 2021 | Urban Labor Supply Responses to Rural Drought Shocks on Rideshare Platforms. |
| BITSS RT2 2020 | Dynamic Documents with Jupyter Notebooks |
| AAEA 2019 | Evaluating a Systems Approach to Suppressive Crop Rotations in Strawberry Production |
| AAEA 2018 | Political Contributions and the Case of South African Land Reform |
| AAEA 2017 | The Economic Viability of Suppressive Crop Rotations in Organic Strawberry Production |
| Empirically Estimating the Impact of Weather on Agriculture | |
| EEA 2014 | The Russian Mir and Agrarian Transition |
| CUNY’s UGRC 2013 | Large Frontiers and Coercion: An Economic Perspective |
Scholarships and Awards
| Fall 2024 | IDInsight, Digital Economy Research & Impact Initiative: “Uncertainty and Frictions in Gig Work: Evidence via Conditional Income Guarantee Interventions |
| Spring 2024 | Einaudi Center Faculty Seed Grant |
| The Welfare Effects of UAV Healthcare Delivery on the Migration Decision | |
| Summer 2023 | Azure Cloud Computing Grant |
| H-1B Policy and Women’s Labor Force Participation: A study of the Indian Marriage Market | |
| Summer 2022 | NSF OSP: 142678 |
| Conference on Reproducibility and Replicability in Economics and Social Sciences (CRRESS) | |
| Summer 2022 | Dyson AEP Faculty Seed Grant |
| The Surname-Ethnicity Connection: A Validation Exercise | |
| Spring 2022 | Dyson AEP Faculty Seed Grant |
| Climate induced soil salinity impacts on agricultural productivity and livelihood diversification in the Sundarbans, India | |
| Winter 2021 | (CGIAR) SPIA small grant for agricultural innovations in Ethiopia |
| Fall 2014 - Spring 2016 | Steindler Fellowship |
| Spring 2017 | Henry A. Jastro Grant |