Duncan Thomas

Duncan Thomas is a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development and professor of economics at Duke University where he is an affiliate of the Duke Global Health Institute. Before joining Duke in 2007, he was at UCLA, RAND and Yale University. His research focuses on global health and development. Duncan's work on the family highlights the important role of female empowerment in improving the well-being of the next generation. This theme runs through much of his research. He has implemented a large-scale randomized intervention in Indonesia to better understand mechanisms that explain why healthier people are richer. Related research examines the immediate and longer-term impact on health and well-being of unanticipated financial shocks in Indonesia, Russia and the United States as well as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Thomas has invested heavily in the design and implementation of large-scale population-based longitudinal surveys the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS) and Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS). He is a Senior Fellow and President of the Bureau for Research on the Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD).