Dave Donaldson
Appointment
Junior Fellow Academy - Alumni
Institution
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Country
USA 
Dave Donaldson has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2009. He was a CIFAR Junior Fellow in the Institutions, Organizations and Growth program from 2009 to 2011. Originally from Calgary, Dave completed a Master’s degree in Physics from the University of Oxford in 2001. He subsequently changed his focus of research, completing MSc and PhD degrees in Economics at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2003 and 2009, respectively. His PhD thesis advisors were Tim Besley and Robin Burgess. He has been the recipient of numerous prestigious scholarships and fellowships, including Oxford’s McKeown Scholarship (1997-2001), the Royal Economic Society Fellowship (2006-2007) and LSE’s Bagri Fellowship (2008-2009).
Dave’s research is primarily concerned with the role of trade – both international and intra-national – in the process of economic development. He has examined the role played by a vast new railroad network in India’s colonial-era growth. He has also documented the evolving extent of weather (temperature and precipitation) extremes on mortality from 1861 to the present. Prior to the advent of railroads in India, these extremes had devastating consequences, as local droughts gave rise to local famines of extreme severity and frequency. Dave’s recent work argues that the integration of markets that came with railroads precipitated the end of peace-time famine in India. He has also documented, however, that there exists a little-known sub-famine incidence of weather shocks on mortality even to this day, and that imperfect market integration is a contributor to this. The persistent effect of weather on death in India has important implications for our estimates of the magnitude and nature of the potential health effects of climate change in developing countries.
Dave’s research is primarily concerned with the role of trade – both international and intra-national – in the process of economic development. He has examined the role played by a vast new railroad network in India’s colonial-era growth. He has also documented the evolving extent of weather (temperature and precipitation) extremes on mortality from 1861 to the present. Prior to the advent of railroads in India, these extremes had devastating consequences, as local droughts gave rise to local famines of extreme severity and frequency. Dave’s recent work argues that the integration of markets that came with railroads precipitated the end of peace-time famine in India. He has also documented, however, that there exists a little-known sub-famine incidence of weather shocks on mortality even to this day, and that imperfect market integration is a contributor to this. The persistent effect of weather on death in India has important implications for our estimates of the magnitude and nature of the potential health effects of climate change in developing countries.