Paul Niehaus

Chancellor’s Associates Endowed Chair in Economics, University of California, San Diego

@@PaulFNiehaus

Paul Niehaus is Chancellor's Associates Endowed Chair in Economics at UC San Diego and an affiliate of BREAD, CEGA, J-PAL, and the NBER. His research examines the design, implementation, and impact of anti-poverty programs at large scales.

He is also co-founder of a series of companies working to amplify capital flows to emerging markets. He is co-founder, former president, and current director at GiveDirectly, the leading international NGO specialized in digital cash transfers and consistently rated one of the most impactful ways to give. He subsequently co-founded and served as a director of the enterprise payments company Segovia and the digital remittance company Taptap Send.

Paul is a recipient of a Sloan Fellowship and a Frisch Medal, and has been named a "Top 100 Global Thinker" by Foreign Policy magazine and one of Vox's "Future Perfect 50." He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University.

Recent work by Paul Niehaus

Money for nothing: The roles of evidence in GiveDirectly’s journey to $1 billion delivered

Is it nuts to give cash to the poor without strings attached?

Social Protection

Paul Niehaus

Published 16.04.26

Reforming India’s public works scheme raised incomes

Improving the payment infrastructure for India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme raised incomes — mostly through increases in non-programme earnings

Social Protection

Karthik Muralidharan Paul Niehaus Sandip Sukhtankar

Published 30.10.23

Improving last-mile service delivery using phone-based monitoring: Evidence from India

Monitoring a programme by calling recipients is a cost-effective way to improve implementation quality

Institutions & Political Economy

Karthik Muralidharan Paul Niehaus Sandip Sukhtankar Jeff Weaver

Published 01.08.22

Balancing corruption and exclusion: Incorporating India’s Aadhaar into public food distribution

Fighting corruption with India's new national ID system has cost some low-income households their benefits in the process

Social Protection

Karthik Muralidharan Paul Niehaus Sandip Sukhtankar

Published 17.04.20
RCTs: Why scale matters

How does scaling up randomised controlled trials make them more effective?

Methods & Measurement

Paul Niehaus

Published 13.03.19
Why studies should be conducted on a larger scale

Karthik Muralidharan and Paul Niehaus argue that when we test things at a small scale, they might not be predictive of how they perform at a larger scale

Methods & Measurement

Karthik Muralidharan Paul Niehaus

Published 10.10.18

Smartcards for smarter payments

Biometric technology and smart ID cards reduced leakage due to corruption and raised participation rates in the welfare system in Andhra Pradesh, India

Social Protection

Karthik Muralidharan Paul Niehaus Sandip Sukhtankar

Published 07.07.17
The future of social assistance in Africa and beyond

A discussion hosted by the Centre for the Study of African Economies, two visionary thinkers in a discussion on the future of social assistance through cash transfers.

Public Economics

James Ferguson Paul Niehaus

Published 21.06.17