People / Students

Mustafa Zahid

I’m interested in using cutting-edge data to assess how environmental factors causally affect social and economic outcomes, teasing out important impact channels and mechanisms to assess how communities and individuals can adapt or respond. I’m motivated by the lack of scholarship contextualizing the impacts of environmental degradation and climate change in the MENA region. Despite the numerous challenges, such as worsening air pollution, unlivable high temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and water stress, impacts in the region remain remarkably understudied.

Over the past three years I worked as a research data analyst at Stanford University’s Center on Food Security and Environment where I coauthored a paper estimating the causal impact of global biomass burning on infant mortality, and a paper quantifying climate change loss and damage, among others. In 2017 I graduated from the University of San Francisco with a BA in International Studies, minoring in Economics and African Studies, and in 2019 with a MSc in International and Development Economics.

Publications / Blog posts:

Global biomass fires and infant mortality

The Impact of Cleft Lip/Palate and Surgical Intervention on the Life Outcomes of Adolescent Life Outcomes

Quantifying Climate Change Loss and Damage Consistent with a Social Cost of Greenhouse Gasses

Climate Opinion in the Arab World

Jeddah’s December Temperature is Getting Increasingly Hotter

Contacts:

mhzahid@berkeley.edu

Website