Dan seeks to bring advances in the use of seasonal climate information and
financial mechanisms to improve livelihoods in developing countries.
His Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University
of California at Berkeley addressed the use of weather information in
irrigated agriculture. He has been involved in the contract design and
evaluation process for index insurance pilots in countries including
Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, Nicaragua, and Honduras.
Research contributions include work on the use of probabilistic
information in decisionmaking, the valuation of environmental features,
the use of remote sensing proxies in quantifying environmental amenities
and environmental risk, the value of information in negotiation and
markets, how uncertainty, risk, and information impacts negotiations
between players, and work specific to index insurance climate information
and economic development.