Joshua Graff Zivin

Joshua Graff Zivin holds the CGT Endowed Chair in Technology Policy at UC San Diego, with faculty positions in the School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) and the Department of Economics. He directs the GPS Peter F. Cowhey Center on Global Transformation and is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.  Graff Zivin received the 2025 Academic Senate Distinguished Research Award from UC San Diego’s Academic Senate and was also honored with the highest distinction, AERE Fellow, by the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. From 2020-2025, he served as the Chief Operating Officer for Amplisal, a firm he co-founded that specialized in remote and hybrid workforce management.

Graff Zivin is an applied microeconomist whose research extends across multiple domains, anchored by work in environmental economics and the economics of science and innovation. In his environmental work, he studies how air pollution, heat, and other environmental stressors, and the regulations designed to control them, influence a wide range of health and economic outcomes. Together with Matt Neidell, he pioneered the study of how environmental conditions affect key components of human capital, including productivity, cognition, and learning. Given the central role of health and human capital in driving economic growth, this work underscores the environment’s role as a factor of production and reframes the traditional view of environmental policy as an implicit tax on economic activity.

His work in the economics of science and innovation investigates how research environments, networks, and institutional structures influence scientific productivity and the development and diffusion of new ideas. Building on methodological innovations he co-developed with Pierre Azoulay—including new measures of scientific productivity and creativity, purpose-built software to analyze research trajectories, and datasets that opened the field to causal analysis—this work identifies how star scientists, collaboration networks, funding shocks, and risk and uncertainty each influence the rate and direction of scientific progress. Together, this work offers a clear empirical account of the institutional and social forces that shape scientific knowledge production and its implications for the broader economy.

His work in health and development economics complements these areas, highlighting how physical, institutional, and social environments shape economic behavior and long-term outcomes.

Professor Graff Zivin received both his Ph.D. and M.S. from UC Berkeley and a B.A. from Rutgers University. Prior to joining UC San Diego in 2008, he spent 11 years on the faculty at Columbia University, where he served as professor of economics in the Mailman School of Public Health and the School of International and Public Affairs and directed the Ph.D. Program in Sustainable Development. From 2004-05, Graff Zivin served as Senior Economist for Health and the Environment on the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Education and CV

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1998
M.S., University of California, Berkeley, 1994
B.A., Rutgers College, Rutgers University, 1993
CV

GPS Spotlight

Working Papers

• Graff Zivin, J, A Lepinteur, M Neidell, A Nieto Castro, “A Cold Stop: Temperature, Unemployment and Joblessness Dynamics,” NBER #34487.
• Aguilar-Gomez, S, J Graff Zivin, and M Neidell, “Killer Congestion: Temperature, Healthcare Utilization and Patient Outcomes,” NBER WP #33491.
• Conn, RW, PF Cowhey, J Graff Zivin, and CL Martin, “Science, Philanthropy, and American Leadership,” NBER WP #31718.
• Carson, R, J Graff Zivin, and J Shrader, “Choose Your Moments: Peer Review and Scientific Risk Taking,” NBER WP #31409
• Angrist, N., K. Winseck, H. Patrinos, and J. Graff Zivin, “The Effects of Human Capital Accumulation on Climate Beliefs and Behaviors,” NBER WP #31000.
• Graff Zivin, J. and G. Singer, “Disparities in Pollution Capitalization Rates: The Role of Direct & Systemic Discrimination,” NBER WP #30814.

Work-in-Progress

• Graff Zivin, J and N Romer, “"It's a Match! Team Composition and Performance in Innovation-Related Tasks.”
• J Graff Zivin, J Huynh, A Lleras-Muney, A, T Justicz, and M Neidell “The Causal Effects of Long‐Term Air Pollution Exposure: Evidence from the US Army.”
• Graff Zivin, J and S Lee, “Wildfire Smoke, School Closure, and Mothers’ Labor Market Outcomes.”
• Gneezy, A, U Gneezy, J Graff Zivin, Gaurav Khanna, E Lyons, and M Serra-Garcia, “Gender Pay Gaps in the Social Sciences.”

Current and Recent Grants

• Financial Structures for Enabling Innovator Participation and Success: Experimental Evidence from Challenge Prizes, UK Research and Innovation Metascience, Co-Principal Investigator, 2025-2026.
• People or Projects (PoP)? Investigating Different Research Funding Styles, UK Research and Innovation Metascience, Co-Principal Investigator, 2025-2026.
• The Health and Educational Impacts from Long-Run Exposure to Pollution in Childhood: Evidence from the US Army, National Institutes of Health, Co-Principal Investigator, 2022-2023. 
• A National Network for Critical Technology Assessment: A First-Year Pilot, National Science Foundation, Co-Investigator, 2022-2023.
• The Health Impacts of Long-Run Exposure to Pollution in Adulthood and Later Life: Evidence from the US Army, National Institutes of Health, Co-Principal Investigator, 2021-2022.
• Risk, Research Funding Rules, and Social Welfare, National Science Foundation, Principal Investigator, 2016-2020.

For a full list of research, please visit: joshgraffzivin.com/research

Selected Recent Publications

• Angrist, N, K Winseck, H Patrinos, and J Graff Zivin, “The Effects of Human Capital Accumulation on Climate Beliefs and Behaviors.” Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming.
• Wang, H, J Graff-Zivin, S Chen, and J Xiong, “Combating Cross-Border Externalities: Evidence from China’s Inter-Provincial Ecological Compensation Initiatives,” Journal of Public Economics, 252(2025): 105495.
• Graff Zivin, J., M. Neidell, N. Sanders, and G. Singer, "When Externalities Collide: Influenza and Pollution,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 15(2023): 320-351.
• Carson, R., J. Graff Zivin, J. Louviere, S. Sadoff, and J. Shrader, "The Risk of Caution: Evidence from an Experiment," Management Science, 68(2022): 9042-9060.
• Graff Zivin J. and E. Lyons “The Effects of Prize Structures on Innovative Performance,” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 111(2021): 577–581.
• Graff Zivin, J. and N. Sanders. "The spread of COVID-19 shows the importance of policy coordination." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117(2020): 32823-32826.
• Graff Zivin, J., Y. Song, Q. Tang, and P. Zhang, “Temperature and High-Stakes Cognitive Performance: Evidence from the National College Entrance Examination in China,” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 104 (2020): 102365.
• Azoulay, P., C. Fons-Rosen, and J. Graff Zivin, “Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?” American Economic Review, 109(2019): 2889-2920.

For a full list of publications, please visit: joshgraffzivin.com/publications