Eva Vivalt

Eva L. Vivalt
Born
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
NationalityCanadian
Academic career
FieldDevelopmental economics, Labor economics
InstitutionAustralian National University
Alma materDartmouth College
University of California, Berkeley
University of Oxford
Doctoral
advisor		Edward Miguel
Websitehttps://evavivalt.com/

Eva Love Vivalt[1] is a Canadian economist. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto and the director of the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford.[2][3]

She is the founder of AidGrade, a research institute that generates and synthesizes evidence in international development.[4]

Education

Vivalt received a Ph.D. in Economics and an M.A. in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.Phil. in Development Studies at the University of Oxford.

Before joining the University of Toronto, she held positions at Australian National University, Stanford University, New York University, and the World Bank.[5]

Academic career

Vivalt's main research interests are the study of obstacles to evidence-based policy decisions. She also has interests in developmental economics, behavioral economics and effective altruism.

She is a principal investigator on Y Combinator Research’s basic income study.[6][7]

She is considered an expert on evidence aggregation and the use of Bayesian hierarchical models[8] and is known for her work on metascience.[9]

Research on the external validity of impact evaluations

Vivalt is known for her work on the external validity of impact evaluations.[10][11]

As a basis for this work, she built a large database of impact evaluations in global development. She found that most development interventions cannot be distinguished from one another in terms of the impacts that they have on a particular outcome[12] and that effect sizes greatly vary within a particular intervention-outcome combination.[13]

Her work in this area has been cited by Angus Deaton, Lant Pritchett, and other leading economists[14] and has entered the public discourse.[15]

Other activity

In 2019, together with Stefano DellaVigna and Devin Pope, Vivalt launched Social Science Prediction Platform, a tool that enables researchers to forecast the results of ongoing studies in the social sciences.[16] Her research on impact evaluation has been covered by The Washington Post,[17] Vox,[18] The Atlantic,[19] and other publications.

Vivalt is a member of Giving What We Can, a community of people who have pledged to donate 10% of their income to the world's most effective charitable organisations.[20]

Personal life

Vivalt married American economist Gabriel Carroll in August 2019.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b "Eva Vivalt, Gabriel Carroll". The New York Times. 2019-08-25.
  2. ^ "Eva Vivalt at Department of Economics, University of Toronto". Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  3. ^ "About". Eva Vivalt. Retrieved 2023-05-11.
  4. ^ "AidGrade". Retrieved 2019-07-01.
  5. ^ "CV" (PDF). Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  6. ^ "Y Combinator Research". Retrieved 2019-07-01.
  7. ^ "Basic Income | OpenResearch". www.openresearchlab.org. Retrieved 2023-05-11.
  8. ^ "Evidence Aggregation and External Validity". Retrieved 2019-07-05.
  9. ^ "Metascience 2019 Symposium". Retrieved 2019-07-05.
  10. ^ "Is 'evidence-based development' writing a cheque its methodology can't cash?". 80,000 Hours. Retrieved 2023-05-11.
  11. ^ Matthews, Dylan (2015-08-04). "Don't teach a man to fish. Just give him the goddamn fish". Vox. Retrieved 2023-05-11.
  12. ^ Vivalt, Eva (2015), "Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in Impact Evaluation", American Economic Review, 105 (5): 467–470, doi:10.1257/aer.p20151015
  13. ^ Vivalt, Eva (2019), "How Much Can We Generalize from Impact Evaluations?", Journal of the European Economic Association
  14. ^ Deaton, Angus; Cartwright, Nancy (August 2018), "Understanding and misunderstanding randomized controlled trials" (PDF), Social Science & Medicine, 210: 2–21, doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.12.005, PMC 6019115, PMID 29331519
  15. ^ Pritchett, Lant. "Is Your Impact Evaluation Asking Questions That Matter? A Four Part Smell Test". Retrieved 2019-07-05., Leigh, Andrew (2018). Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Are Changing Our World. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300236125.
  16. ^ DellaVigna, Stefano; Pope, Devin; Vivalt, Eva (25 Oct 2019), "Predict science to improve science", Science, 366 (6464): 428–429, Bibcode:2019Sci...366..428D, doi:10.1126/science.aaz1704, PMID 31649186, S2CID 204882061
  17. ^ Matthews, Dylan (2013-12-26), "The Wonkblog Guide to Holiday Giving", The Washington Post, retrieved 2019-07-01
  18. ^ Matthews, Dylan (2015-08-04), "Don't teach a man to fish. Just give him the goddamn fish", Vox, retrieved 2019-07-01
  19. ^ Yong, Ed (2015-12-10), "Make Science More Reliable, Win Cash Prizes", The Atlantic, retrieved 2019-07-01
  20. ^ "Members". Retrieved 14 October 2019.