Sam Asher

Sam Asher is an Assistant Professor of International Economics in the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is an Associate of the Bureau for Research and the Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) and the Center for International Development (Harvard University), and an affiliate at the Centre for Policy Research (New Delhi). Together with his longtime collaborator Paul Novosad, he founded Development Data Lab in 2019 to help policymakers, researchers, civil society, and the private sector make much better use of the large amounts of data being generated in lower income countries. He is also a creator of the SHRUG open data platform. Sam's research seeks to understand the drivers of growth and structural transformation in lower-income countries. He uses high spatial resolution data from unconventional sources such as satellites and government administrative data exhaust to test for the role of place in shaping people’s economic opportunities. Sam received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University, and was then a postdoctoral research fellow in the Economics Department and Nuffield College, University of Oxford.