Mustafa is 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. He is currently working on a project estimating dust-driven fine particulate matter, its impacts on humans, and the effectiveness of nature-based solutions in mitigating it. Mustafa remains 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.
Between 2021 and 2024, Mustafa worked as a research data analyst at Stanford University’s Center on Food Security and Environment where he coauthored papers estimating the causal impact of global biomass burning on infant mortality, quantifying climate change loss and damage, and assessing climate adaptation across multiple sectors over the past number of decades. In 2017 he graduated from the University of San Francisco with a BA in International Studies, minoring in Economics and African Studies, and in 2019 with a MS in International and Development Economics.
Publications / Blog posts:
Are We Adapting to Climate Change?
Global biomass fires and infant mortality
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
Research Group(s):
Society, Environment and Economics Lab (Anthoff)
ERGEcon (Paige Weber and David Anthoff)
Awards:
Opportunities Lab/Energy Institute Environmental/Energy Economics Mentorship Award, 2025
Contacts:
Other Links: