Note [Apr 2015]: this older, archived version is up while I transition to a new hosting platform with greater security and flexibility.
Information and incentive problems in risk management decisions
How do consumers, economic entities, and public policymakers differ in their perception and behavior when it comes to hedging against risk? This is a question that has become more prominent in my research work. Specifically in the United States, the history and structure of flood insurance demonstrates tension between classic economic theory of dealing with risk and the reality of cultural, political, and business pressures working against the operation of an efficient market. The result may well be that both hazard exposure and insurance protection are distributed unevenly across demographic groups, even when there is no “rational” reason for this to be so. These disparities could have important social consequences that need to be better-understood.
The economies of disaster relief
In 2005, I was interning at STRATFOR in Austin, doing mostly geopolitics, security and energy market analysis, and ended up working intensively on the logistical fallout from Katrina’s Gulf landfall. At the time, I was an undergraduate at Cambridge University, and I took advantage of an original research module to design a fieldwork project in the New Orleans area in April 2006. It was intended to be about people’s religious perceptions of the event. But what has actually ended up sticking with me is the complex way in which informal or non-governmental organizations, such as churches, created distribution systems for people, materials, and information without a lot of central direction.
Since then, I have remained intrigued by how direct contacts between persons involved in crisis situations create markets for things of value, and by extension what changes are underway in the role of official response coordinators. Given that the last few years, with the rise of the likes of Ushahidi and a better academic science of disaster, has been an exciting and dynamic time in the field, I am eager to get back into a practical setting.
Since January 2011, I have been employed by the DoD-funded Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) program, based at UT-Austin, to examine institutional capacity for complex emergencies in Africa. My work focuses especially on the levels of grassroots community and civic preparedness and on the barriers to developing-world participation in the international insurance and reinsurance markets.
Crisis preparation and management
I am interested in the hazard mitigation/risk reduction and preparation aspects of the emergency management field in addition to the operational crisis logistics side. It is well known that economic pressures have created a global supply chain that has replaced many “just in case” contingency buffers with a “just in time” system that maximizes day-to-day efficiency.
How do we create more robustness in the availability of vital materials and personnel in temporary, extreme circumstances without placing undue burdens on competitiveness during all other times?
New Currencies and the democratization of the global economy
While large and influential economic players have increasingly found borders to be less and less relevant to them, ordinary consumers and small traders still find it difficult and expensive to make digital transactions both domestically and globally. They are burdened by high fees, long wait times, poor ethics, and/or counterparty risk in being forced to rely on services like PayPal, major credit card processors, U.S. inter-bank transactions, and international wire transfers.
What is the potential of new innovations in currency trading, in particular Bitcoin, to effectively disrupt this service structure and open easy exchanges of stored value to the global masses? I have been participating in the Bitcoin community for some time, hoping to gain insight into the benefits and drawbacks of the system as it deals with fiat interface exchange, over-the-counter trading, the creation of bonds and derivative securities, the proliferation of scams, and media accusations of the system as a front for criminality.
This participation has also opened up important insights into the nature of fiat currency itself and the forms that it now takes in the digital age. When the ability to actually transact to another individual quickly and cheaply is paramount, the idea of a “dollar” becomes less meaningful. Instead, a “cash in the mail dollar”, “bank account dollar”, “ING or Wells Fargo P2P dollar”, “exchange account credit dollar”, etc., take on distinct forms that are important to people and businesses.
The influence of disruptive technology on the practical structure of governments
How do changes in communication between constituents, interest groups, media outlets, and officials affect where practical power rests in government? This is an issue that goes beyond the trope of polarized cable news. It could affect the fundamental relationship between executive and legislative power (as agencies seek to deal with “customers” directly rather than through elected intermediaries). It also has important implications for federalism in the United States, as voters come to be far more aware of national and even international issues than they are of local and state ones.
Local authority integrity in the digital age
A massive firehose of raw data, particularly financial data, is becoming characteristic of local government “transparency,” especially in the United States. However, what are the implications of the gap that exists between the availability of such data and the ability of the public and media to process it into useful information? Where will corruption hide in the 21st century?
The impact of public opinion on foreign policy
Effects of electoral method and legislative structure on political party character