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Publications

2019

Rolf, E, Simchowitz, M, Dean, S, Liu, L, Björkegren, D, Hardt, M, and Blumenstock, JE (2019). Balancing Competing Objectives for Welfare-Aware Machine Learning with Imperfect DataThe Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS ’20), Joint Workshop on AI for Social Good (Best Paper Award)

Khan, MR, and Blumenstock, JE (2019). Multi-CGN: Graph Convolutional Networks for Multi-View Networks, with Applications to Global PovertyThe Thirty-Third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2019), Honolulu, HI

Björkegren, D, Blumenstock, JE, and Knight, S (2019). (Machine) Learning what Governments Value, The Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS ’20), Workshop on Machine Learning for the Developing World

Cadamuro, G, Vinayak, RK, Shapiro, JN, Blumenstock, JE, and Kakade, S (2019). The Illusion of Change: Correcting for Bias when Inferring Changes in Sparse, Societal-Scale DataThe 30th Annual Web Conference 2019 (WWW 2019), San Francisco, CA

Aulck, L, Nambi, D, Velagapudo, N, Blumenstock, JE, West, J (2019). Mining University Registrar Records to Predict First-Year Undergraduate AttritionProceedings of the 12th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 19) 

Chi, G, State, B, Blumenstock, JE, and Adamic, L (2019). Who ties the world together? Evidence from a Large Online Social NetworkThe 8th International Conference on Complex Networks and their Applications (COMPLEX NETWORKS 2019). Lisbon, Portugal

2018

Blumenstock, JE, Callen, M, and Ghani, T (2018). Why Do Defaults Affect Behavior? Experimental Evidence from AfghanistanAmerican Economic Review, 108 (10), 2868-2901 [pdf]

Park, PS, Blumenstock, JE, and Macy, MW (2018). The strength of long-range ties in population-scale social networksScience, 362(6421), 1410-1413 [pdf]

Blumenstock, JE (2018). Don’t forget people in the use of big data for developmentNature, 561 (7722), 170-172 [pdf]

Blumenstock, JE (2018). Estimating Economic Characteristics with Phone DataAmerican Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 108, 72-76 [pdf]

2017

Steele, Sundsoy, Pezzulo, Alegana, Blumenstock, JE, Bjelland, Engo-Monsen, de Montjoye, Iqbal, Hadiuzzaman, Wetter, Tatem, and Bengtsson, L. (2017). Mapping poverty using mobile phone and satellite dataJournal of the Royal Society Interface, 14:20160690 [pdf]

Khan, M.R., Blumenstock, J.E., 2017. Determinants of Mobile Money Adoption in Pakistan. The Thirty-first Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS ‘17), Workshop on Machine Learning for the Developing World. Long Beach, CA.

Head, A, Manguin, M, Tran, N, and Blumenstock, JE (2017). Can Human Development be Measured with Satellite Imagery?, Proceedings of the 9th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2017) [pdf]

Blumenstock, JE, Maldeniya, D, and Lokanathan, S (2017). Understanding the Impact of Urban Infrastructure: New Insights from Population-Scale Data, Proceedings of the 9th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2017) [pdf]

Shah, K, Martinez, P, Blumenstock, JE, Dionisio, J, and Heimerl, K (2017). An Investigation of Phone Upgrades in Remote Community Cellular Networks, Proceedings of the 9th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2017) [pdf]

2016

Blumenstock, JE (2016). Fighting Poverty with Data, Science, 353(6301), 753-754 [pdf]

Blumenstock, JE, Eagle, N, Fafchamps, M (2016). Airtime Transfers and Mobile Communications: Evidence in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters, Journal of Development Economics, 120: 157-181 [pdf]

Khan, MR, Blumenstock, JE (2016). Predictors without Borders: Behavioral Modeling of Product Adoption in Three Developing Countries, Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD ’16)  [pdf]

Aulck, L, Blumenstock, JE, West, J (2016). Predicting Student Dropout in Higher Education,Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML ’16), Workshop on Machine Learning in Social Good Applications

Blumenstock, JE, Keleher, N, Reisinger, J (2016). The Premise of Local Information: Building Reliable Economic Indicators from a Decentralized Network of Contributor, Proceedings of the 8th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2016), Notes Track [pdf]

Khan, M, Reed, P, and Blumenstock, J (2016). Observing gender dynamics and disparities with mobile phone metadata, Proceedings of the 8th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2016), Notes Track [pdf]

2015

Blumenstock, JE, Cadamuro, G, On, R (2015). Predicting Poverty and Wealth from Mobile Phone Metadata, Science, 350(6264), 1073-1076 [pdf]

Blumenstock, JE, Keleher, N (2015). The Price is Right? Statistical evaluation of a crowd-sourced market information system in Liberia, ACM Computing for Development (DEV 2015) [pdf]

Blumenstock, JE, Callen, MC, Ghani, T, Koepke, L (2015). Promises and Pitfalls of Mobile Money in Afghanistan: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial, Proceedings of the 7th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2015) [pdf]

Khan, M, Manoj, J, Singh, A, and Blumentock, J (2015). Behavioral Modeling for Churn Prediction: Early Indicators and Accurate Predictors of Customer Defection and Loyalty, 2015 IEEE International Congress on Big Data (Big Data `15)

2014

Aker, J and Blumenstock, J (2014). The Economic Impacts of New Technologies in Africa, The Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, 354-371

Blumenstock, JE (2014). Calling for Better Measurement: Estimating an Individual’s Wealth and Well-Being, ACM KDD (Data Mining for Social Good) [pdf]

Blumenstock, JE, Chokkalingam, R, Gaikwad, V and S Kondepudi (2014). Probabilistic Inference of Unknown Locations: Exploiting Collective Behavior when Individual Data is Scarce, ACM Computing for Development (DEV 2014) [pdf]

Young, WM, Blumenstock, JE, Fox, EB, and TM McCormick (2014). Detecting and classifying anomalous behavior in spatiotemporal network data, ACM KDD (Learning About Emergencies with Social Information) [pdf]

Kelley, I, and Blumentock, J (2014). Computational Challenges in the Analysis of Large, Sparse, Spatiotemporal Data, The 6th ACM International Workshop on Data Intensive Distributed Computing (DIDC `14)

2013

Blumenstock, JE and Fratamico L (2013). Social and Spatial Ethnic Segregation: A Framework for Analyzing Segregation With Large-Scale Spatial Network Data, The 4th Annual ACM Symposium on Computing for Development (DEV ’13) [pdf]

Heimerl, K, Ali, K, Blumenstock, JE, Gawalt, B, and E Brewer (2013). Expanding Rural Cellular Networks with Virtual Coverage, 10th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation [pdf]

2012

Blumenstock, JE, and N Eagle (2012). Divided We Call: Disparities in Access and Use of Mobile Phones in Rwanda, Information Technology and International Development, 8(2), 1-16 [pdf]

Blumenstock, JE (2012). Inferring Patterns of Internal Migration from Mobile Phone Call Records,Information Technology for Development, 18(2), 107-125 [pdf]

Mehrohtra, A, V Mohan, A Nguyen, and JE Blumenstock (2012). Differences in phone use between men and women: Quantitative evidence from Rwanda, Proceedings of the 5th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2012), 297-306 [pdf]

Blumenstock, JE (2011). Using Mobile Phone Data to Measure the Ties Between Nations, Proceedings of the 2011 iConference, 195-202 [pdf]

Blumenstock, JE, and N Eagle (2010). Mobile Divides: Gender, Socioeconomic Status, and Mobile Phone Use in Rwanda, Proceedings of the 4th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2010), 6 [pdf]

Blumenstock, JE, Y Shen and N Eagle (2010). A Method for Estimating the Relationship Between Phone Use and Wealth, ICTD 2010 (Workshop on Quantitative Meets Qualitative Methods) [pdf]

Blumenstock, JE, D Gillick, and N Eagle (2010). Who’s Calling? Demographics of Mobile Phone Use in Rwanda, AAAI Spring Symposium [pdf]