Information Economics

Once a pervasive surveillance infrastructure is in place, a government will always have an incentive to abuse that power, according to new research.

The School of Information is delighted to announce the creation of its first endowed chair, the Hal R. Varian Chair in Information Economics, thanks to a generous gift from Hal R. Varian, the founding dean of the I School and now the Chief Economist at Google, with matching funds from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Blumenstock’s research measures how person-to-person financial transfers via mobile phone affect the risk and income volatility of the agriculturally-based economies of rural Rwanda.

Blumenstock is analyzing a database of every interpersonal monetary transfer over Rwanda's primary telecom network from 2005-2009, including over 1 billion transfers and phone calls by 1 million individuals.