Estimating Economic Characteristics with Phone Data

Joshua Blumenstock

AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2018, vol. 108, 72-76

Abstract: Historically, economists have relied heavily on survey-based data collection to measure social and economic well-being. Here, we investigate the extent to which the "digital footprints" of an individual can be used to infer his or her socioeconomic characteristics. Using two different datasets from Afghanistan and Rwanda, we show that phone data can be used to estimate the wealth of individuals in two very different economic environments. However, we find that such models are relatively brittle, and that a model trained in one country cannot be used to estimate characteristics in another. These results suggest several promising applications and directions for future work.

JEL-codes: C51 C83 D14 D31 I31 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20181033
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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