Paul Blanchard

Paul is a PhD candidate in Economics at Trinity College Dublin. His research is focused on the use of big data sources to study human mobility in developing countries. He exploits mobile phone data to better understand the role of different modalities of human movements in a variety of development issues, from the persistence of spatial wealth gaps to structural transformation and growth. Paul is also interested in combining phone-derived mobility measures with satellite data and other data sources in order to examine migration responses to climate shocks in sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to starting his PhD, he obtained an engineering degree from Ecole Centrale Paris and graduated from the MSc in Economics for Development at Oxford University before joining the Disaster Risk Management department at the World Bank.